


both dream and reality, one and the same

by devicing



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: AU - Dæmons, AU - Historical, Edo Period, M/M, Somewhat Unreliable POV, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-06-19 06:33:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 43,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15504411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devicing/pseuds/devicing
Summary: The boy shows up on his doorstep in the middle of the first typhoon of the season. The air is thick with rain and the wind howls through the trees, but the red umbrella stands out in stark, steady contrast to its surroundings.Though his eyes are obscured by the lip of the umbrella, the stranger’s smile cuts sharp like a moonbeam through the night.“Any space to spare for a weary traveler?” he calls over the beating rain as one hand reaches out to invitingly dangle a cloth purse, heavy with coins.Or, Momota Kaito and the spirits that haunt him.[Edo Period AU with a splash of His Dark Materials for flavor]





	1. i

**Author's Note:**

> Shit is this kind of AU just my thing now?
> 
> I tried v hard to keep the HDM stuff simple (unlike my other dæmon AU fic) and the historical stuff not-too-inaccessible. I also stretched the limits between dæmons & humans (literally) because birds. Hover text (pc) for Japanese cultural-isms so you don’t have to go hunting down dictionaries or wiki articles (trying to get it to work on mobile too so bear with me)!
> 
> Anyway this is kind of a love letter to my final month living in Japan. Japanese summers are objectively the worst, but they’re also so rich in imagery and lore that I will miss very, very much as I return home.  
>  
> 
> _短夜や_   
>  _夢も現も_   
>  _同じこと_
> 
> _on brief summer nights_   
>  _both dream and reality_   
>  _are one and the same_
> 
> -Takahama Kyoshi 1874-1959

傘さし

_kasa-sashi_

 

The boy shows up on his doorstep in the middle of the first typhoon of the season. The air is thick with rain and the wind howls through the trees, but the red umbrella stands out in stark, steady contrast to its surroundings. 

Though his eyes are obscured by the lip of the umbrella, the stranger’s smile cuts sharp like a moonbeam through the night. 

“Any space to spare for a weary traveler?” he calls over the beating rain as one hand reaches out to invitingly dangle a cloth purse, heavy with coins.

Aquila’s talons bite nervously into the fabric across Momota’s shoulder, but the constant bite in his chest is the stronger motivator of the two.

It takes some effort to get the _shoji_ screen to slide along its rain-swollen wooden track. “Sure,” he grunts, throwing his shoulder into the stubborn door. “But it’s not much.”

The stranger sweeps his umbrella down and brings it closed in one fluid movement as he hops up onto the _engawa_. “No, it’s not,” he smartly agrees, “but a roof is a roof.” He begins to shake the water from the umbrella. Through his messy bangs his eyes—dark and stormy like the night surrounding them—catch Momota’s. They crinkle at the corner and Momota feels a chill run down his spine that has nothing to do with the heavy downpour.

He turns his back away from the sensation and heads off to dig the second, musty futon out from where it’s buried somewhere in storage.

It doesn’t occur to him until morning why something had felt so off about the stranger, but by that point the boy is long gone. Only a single, impossibly shiny gold _koban_ remains on the bedding as testament that he’d been there at all.

As the sunlight breaks across the empty room, he realizes he’d never seen the stranger’s dæmon. 

 

 

 

 

When he tells Maki this the next day, she just scoffs. 

“Are you sure it wasn’t just a dream?” she says, nocking another arrow and taking aim at the crude target at the other end of the field. 

Momota draws out the large, gold coin from his pocket. “How do you explain this then?” he counters as he bounces the light off of the polished metal and across the line of her cheekbone. “You don’t think I can dream up gold now, do you?”

He barely hears the short breath of her laugh over the arrow as it whistles through the air. “Would that we were only so lucky,” she deadpans, still staring out at the target.

Momota lets out his own laugh, slumping back against the tree behind him. High above them, the screeching cry of an eagle rings out to echo him, causing him to grin.

“You should call her back.” He looks back down to see Maki with her bow lowered and her head tipped to the sky. “If one of the local lords spots her…”

Momota rolls his eyes. “Oh come on, she’s almost twice the size of those snobby falconry birds and she’s not even hunting. No one will notice or care.” 

Maki turns to glare at him, unbudging. He can’t really be mad at her for it though—after all, it’s not her fault that she has an image to maintain and superiors to please. It’s bad enough that she lets a commoner like him sneak this far into the _daimyo's_ hunting grounds anyway. With a sigh, he brings two fingers to his mouth and lets out a sharp whistle. Aquila beats her wings once, twice, then nosedives in a perfect arc towards the ground. She cuts up at the last second, swooping down to a perch he can’t see beyond the billowing heads of the rice stalks.

“There. Happy?”

“Very,” she replies. The grass parts not too far to her right, and suddenly the sleek, black form of her dæmon manifests from the weeds. She bends down to meet him and smoothes a hand over his head as he carefully drops a small bundle of arrows into her other palm. After she nonchalantly wipes the slobber off on her clothes, she takes up form once more and aims at the now-blank target. 

“He _was_ real,” Momota mutters a few minutes later, turning the coin back and forth across his knuckles. “He _had_ to be.”

And because it’s been too long since his last episode and routine dictates it has to happen eventually, that’s when the familiar clench in his chest comes back. His breath punches its way out of him, dry against his throat but wet in his lungs as always. He feels the familiar brush of wind against his skin as Aquila swoops down to his side. He reaches out one hand to smooth down her back—a familiar comfort—as he waits for the fit to subside. 

“One _ryo_ ,” he hears Maki say after the coughing fades out. Her eyes are hard where they’re trained on the coin now white-knuckled in his grip. “Will that be enough?”

Enough to get him to the capital. Enough to get him to a doctor. Enough to pay for the treatment.

He fights back against the painful jump of his chest as his mouth falls into a thin, wan smile. “Ask me again tomorrow. Maybe that mysterious stranger will visit my dreams again tonight.”

Then he can’t hold it back any longer. Another cough rattles through him, and this time he tastes the copper on his tongue. Aquila nudges her beak across his knuckles and lets out a low warble. 

“If only we were so lucky,” Maki mutters again, her fingers deep in the dark scruff of her dæmon’s neck. There’s a pained slope to her brow where it cuts towards the horizon and pointedly not at him. 

He brushes his sleeve against the wetness dripping from the corner of his mouth, thankful that she won’t see.

_If only_ , he agrees. 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

馬鹿囃子

_baka-bayashi_

 

A week later, the shoji screen’s stubbornness proves to be its downfall. After several months of procrastination on getting it fixed and one too many forceful jerks to get it opened, Momota’s patience had snapped and so, too, had the wooden framing. 

With a few colorful curses on his tongue and a lighter-than-he’d-prefer satchel of coins in his hand, he had set off on the long walk into town.

(He hadn’t told Maki, figuring it would be easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission, and her mother-henning is as endearing as it is stifling, sometimes.)

Evenings are cooler, thankfully, and the farming fires have all died out by the time he reaches the edge of the village. It’s a blessing on his lungs. All too cocky as a result of this rare reprieve from the illness, he takes in a long breath of night air and lets it whoosh out of him on another long, contented sigh. His chest still aches, but it’s a duller ache than usual. 

Only Aquila nipping at his ear keeps him from walking at his normal pace as they make idle conversation along the way. It’s for his own good, he knows, but he’s antsy. He used to make this trek several times a week, either going on supply runs for the family or doing odd jobs in town for extra coin. But it’s been years since his grandparents passed and it feels like just as long since the last time he felt he could do anything of value by himself.

The walk used to take him a little under an hour one way. This time around, it’s almost twice that. 

“I guess this means we’re staying the night,” he mutters as the lights of town start to appear on the horizon, farther below the belly of the moon than he’d planned. 

“You’d better hope Shuuichi has an extra room then,” Aquila replies.

 

 

 

 

As it turns out, he does, but not without a few complications. 

“I’m sorry, Momota-kun,” his friend says as he hikes a large, overflowing pile of papers up against his chest. “The guest in the third room is being a bit—” 

A crash comes from further in the inn, followed by a stream of loud, slurred curses. 

“… _difficult,_ ” he finishes, his wince barely visible over the messy load of parchment. “Uncle said he’ll send for the guard if it gets any worse, but in the meantime you’ll have to wait.”

Momota lets out a bright laugh and tries to pretend he doesn’t see the worried crease in Shuuichi’s brow at the strained wheeze of it. “Don’t worry about it. I still have to place my order for the new door and besides, I haven’t eaten in hours. I’ll find a way to keep myself entertained.”

Shuuichi hums lightly as he tries to straighten up his load. “I wish I could join you, but someone has to watch the front of the house with what’s going on back there.”

Momota waves a lazy hand to mollify him. “I told you, don’t worry. We can get breakfast together instead. Or you can just drag yourself back home to the village sometime. People miss you snooping around their business.”

“I’d like that,” his friend replies, smile soft and easy.

“Then it’s settled,” Momota says. “C’mon, Aquila! The workshop won’t be open all night.”

The bird cocks her head up at him from the floor. Reina, half curled around one of her legs and playfully nipping at the feathers, spits out a few bits of down and rolls onto her back. The weasel then scampers back across the floor to her human, who gently scoops her into the long, drooping sleeve of his _haori_.

“By the way, the _bon_ festival is happening tonight, so be careful of the crowds,” Shuuichi calls out as Momota slides the door aside to exit. 

Momota offers him a salute with his free hand, then heads off into the night. 

 

 

 

 

 

The further Momota walks towards the center of town, the louder the thunder of the drums becomes. Woodwinds pierce the night like ghostly wails in harmony with the buoyant chanting of the townsfolk. He can barely track Aquila’s bright white body as she darts from rooftop to rooftop ahead of him and far above the crowd filling the streets. With every elbow he gets to the gut and every wooden sandal that clips his toes, he wishes more than ever that he could do the same. 

The order had gone smoothly enough, even if it had left his already light pockets feeling empty in comparison. Food is the next priority, but breaking free from the current of the crowd is an impossible task. Instead, he lets it lead him onwards to its end. It’s not hard to guess where that will be. 

As he predicts, the crowd begins to thin out at the riverbank. Further off he can see the long line of guiding lights as they snake off down the path and into the distance, but it’s late and most families have already left their lanterns to the night. Only a few, quiet groups remain, their heads bowed together in prayer. 

Momota looks at how the water reflects the stars beyond the ethereal glow of the firelight, and he comes to a decision. 

It’s another coin out of his pockets, but it feels right. He hasn’t brought any food along with him, and it’s been years since he’s properly cleaned his ramshackle house or the headstone in the woods beyond it, but he figures it’s the least he can do this _bon_ festival to send his family off right.

(He tries not to wonder if anyone will do the same for him in a year’s time.)

With the newly procured lantern in one hand and a small bundle of lit pinewood in the other, he heads down to a secluded spot at the foot of one of the large bridges. He finds a decent enough point at its base where a large river rock slopes down the bank and into the water, and he carefully lowers himself down onto it. The current feels good across his smarting toes as he lowers them in. Aquila swoops down to meet him, splashing into the shallow water gleefully like the water-bird she is. Then he lifts the lantern up to find the hidden wick and maneuvers the makeshift match around the wooden supports. It takes a few tries, but eventually the lantern lights. With that settled, he extinguishes the match in the water and then takes the lantern in both hands. It’s not exactly the proper way to go about this, but it’ll do.

Then, just as he’s settling into a quiet prayer, a sharp gust of wind brushes against his neck and snuffs the lantern out in an instant. He opens his mouth to mumble a low curse when someone cuts him off.

“Good evening, stranger!” an oddly familiar voice chirps from behind him. 

Momota turns and there is the boy from a week before, perched just behind him on the slope of the riverbank. His hands are folded lazily across his knees with his chin resting on top of them both. When he’d gotten there is anyone’s guess. 

Once again, it’s his wide, crescent-moon grin that draws attention first. Momota peels his gaze away from it to glance left, then right. Just as he suspected, there isn’t a dæmon in sight. His body tenses unwillingly at the wrongness of it. 

He can’t be dreaming _now_ , can he?

He shakes his head, trying to get rid of the thought. “Y-Yeah…,” he finally replies.

“So,” the boy says, completely unruffled by his hesitation. “What’d you spend it on?”

Momota frowns, confused by the sudden segue. “Wha—?”

“The money I left you, of course.” He leans forward, eyes wide with intrigue. “New clothes? Hmm, obviously not, since what you’ve got on now is practically rags. Maybe a new house? You could definitely use one of those, or at least a new futon.” He pauses to wince and dramatically stretch out his spine. “Ugh, my back was _killing_ me in the morning. When’s the last time you properly took care of that sad excuse for a mat, anyway? I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve started a whole new civilization of mites in there. It’s really almost impressive.”

He looks like he wants to continue babbling on, so Momota tries to interrupt him. “Nothing, I haven’t spent it on anything yet.”

The stranger blinks. “Well, that’s a waste. You’re not one of those types who’s got a secret stash of gold buried somewhere in the woods, are you?” He gasps, leaning forward with bright eyes.“Hiding under the noses of the _daimyo_ by pretending to be a ratty old peasant so you can get away with lower taxes, is that it? That’s _dirty_ , but I kind of like the way you think—”

“What? No, _jeez_ ,” Momota sputters, raising a hand to cut the guy off for good. “I’m just saving up for something, alright?” 

When the boy doesn’t move to interrupt him again, Momota lets out a haggard sigh. He lowers the raised hand and casts his eyes away, awkwardly. It’s as good a time to express his gratitude as any, so swallowing his pride he says, “I really needed the help, though, so… thanks, I guess. Don’t know what I did to deserve it, but… it meant a lot.”

“Oh,” is all the stranger says in response. His face is carefully blank when Momota glances back at him. 

“…Oh?” Momota prompts. And, damn, is it _eerie_ not being able to turn to a person’s dæmon for visual queues. Dogs tuck their tails between their legs when they’re scared. Birds ruffle their feathers when pleased and snakes rattle out their displeasure. So on and so forth. All he has to go on here is the arch of this stranger’s brow and the curve of his mouth, and both are unsettlingly unreadable. 

“It’s just,” the boy eventually starts, nonchalantly brushing some flyaway hair out of his face with a sigh. “I guess I was hoping you would have gotten rid of it before you had to find out that it’s counterfeit.”

Momota’s blood runs cold and the ground feels like it falls out from under him. 

“W- _What_?” he manages to choke out.

The stranger shrugs, leaning back on his arms. “Oh I _know_ , it’s a terrible shame, right? Especially since holding onto it makes you a primo-target for the _bakufu._ I can only imagine how you’re feeling right now.”

Well Momota’s feeling a lot of things right now. A bit pissed off, for starters. A bit more than _a bit_ , actually.“You…,” he seethes, feeling his knuckles pop as he clenches them into fists to hold back his rage. “Is this a fucking joke to you?”

If the stranger senses his anger, he doesn’t show it. Instead he replies, “I mean, I do think it’s a little funny. What is it that all those hoity-toity poets and playwrights like to call things like this? Ah, _dramatic irony!_ At least I think that’s it. Is that right?”

Momota is halfway to vaulting up to give this guy a piece of his mind, but his stomach seizes and he doubles over in a fit of coughs before he can even get up onto his knees. His throat burns like he’s expunging glass instead of air, but all that comes out from his mouth are viscous globs of mucus and blood. They splatter across the rock and between the webbing of his fingers as he tries to swallow down the anger and shame.

The strange boy hums somewhere above him, and Momota glares back with every bit of heat he has left in him. Still, the boy watches him cooly, something calculated in his gaze. 

“If it makes you feel better,” he starts, voice pitched softer than before, “you can take solace in me saying that I had no idea it was fake when I gave it to you.” 

Momota snarls up at him. “Yeah, is that right?”

The stranger’s demeanor changes in an instant, jumping back to the brightness from before. “Who knows?” he says coyly, drawing up one finger to the seam of his lips. “But, tell you what: I’ll make it up to you.”

Momota clears his throat a few times but his voice still comes out raw. “How’s that?”

The boy draws a scrap of parchment and a piece of what looks like charcoal out from somewhere in his dark yukata. “Come back to town in a week’s time after all this silly _bon_ nonsense is finished,” he says, messily scrawling something across the paper, balanced against his knee. “Bring the counterfeit coin with you here and you’ll have that pesky legal problem off your hands in no time. I’ll even find a way to double your earnings.”

“Why the fuck would I trust you on that after all this bullshit?” Momota asks. 

“Dunno. I know I sure wouldn’t.” With a flourish of his wrist, he finishes folding the scrap of paper and then offers it up like an olive branch. 

Still glaring, Momota snatches the bundle from him, not noticing the object folded inside it until after it’s already in his hand.

“One week,” the boy says as he pushes himself up to standing. “I look forward to seeing you again, Momota Kaito!”

Then, with a short wave of his hand, he heads back off into the night, as quietly as he’d come.

“How did he know your name?” Aquila asks, her voice thin with worry as she hops back and forth across the slope, tracking the boy’s retreating back and sending Momota the occasional worried glance.

He barely hears her question, though, too busy unfolding the complicated creases of the note. Once he gets it opened, a small, thin piece of wood—the edge tipped in a strange, yellow substance—rolls out from the fold. A sulfur match, Momota idly registers. He sets it aside and then reads over the message.

 

_Shitamachi_

_Two story building by the fish monger_

_Look for the red banner hanging from the upstairs window_

_Ask for Ouma Kokichi_

 

Momota sneers, crumpling the note into a tight ball and striking the match against the rock underneath him. 

In a fit of impulsivity, he considers setting the offending note ablaze, but it’s an empty threat at best. Instead, he tucks it into the satchel with the rest of his money, then lights the lantern once more and walks back up the hill to tie it up along with the others. 

One week, huh? Well, he’ll have to tell Shuuichi to keep a room open for him. 

 

 

 

 

He gets the reservation settled with Shuuichi the next morning over an early breakfast, then gets a harsh (if not worried) scolding from Maki upon his return.

The week passes uneventfully, and all he can think about is the unanswered question that is the dæmonless boy and the coin, heavy in his pocket. 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I was hoping to post this in one fell swoop before moving, but I was getting antsy holding onto it on top of moving stress and figured breaking it into shorter sections will motivate me to get that last bit done. Expect maybe 4-5 more chapters after this! Ty as always to Lauren for being my ever-helpful beta and just general life motivator!


	2. ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A week later, Momota chases his curiosity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dæmons so far:
> 
> Momota — White Bellied Sea Eagle  
> Maki — Panther (Melanistic Jaguar)  
> Saihara — Short-tailed Weasel  
> Ouma — ???

白徳利

_shirodokkuri_

 

The edge of the large _koban_ coin bites into Momota’s palm as he clutches it secretly within the loose hang of his sleeve a week later.

He’s not exactly surprised to find himself outside a gambling hall, all things considered.

While most of the town is sleepily shutting down for the evening, all around him the red light district is only just beginning to wake up. The sun hangs low on the horizon and the street is bathed in a hazy orange glow. Peddlers call out their wares with tobacco-thick voices as they rattle garlands of bells for attention. Women with low-dipping collars attempt to catch Momota’s eye when they pass. He pointedly turns his eyes away from them, cheeks flaring almost as red as the banner waving from the second story window above him. 

“Are you just going to stand there all night, or do you plan on coming inside at some point?” comes a flat voice to his left. Momota turns to see a man watching him from the doorway of the building. His hair sweeps lazily across his face, only revealing one eye, which watches Momota with vague curiosity. Next to him is a gruff looking goat, who paws at the ground and snuffles hotly in Momota’s direction. 

Momota grips the coin harder, straightening his back and raising his chin. “Dunno. Should I?”

The doorman just snorts and leans further into the doorframe. “Your empty confidence is cute, but maybe you should come back when you’ve got the bark to match that bite.”

Momota scowls. “Do you try to drive away all of your potential customers like this?”

The goat bleats out what sounds like a derisive laugh.

“Hey, I meant that as more of a warning than a refusal, but suit yourself,” the doorman replies, drawing a checkered handkerchief out of his obi to casually wipe away the sweat beading at his neck.

“Look,” Momota grits out, “I’m looking for a guy named Ouma. Do you know him or what?”

The man’s one visible eyebrow raises in what Momota takes as surprise. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a _cho-han_ kind of guy, but sure.” He steps aside and sweeps one billowy sleeve at the entrance. "Third door on your left,” he says with a suspect smile. 

Momota doesn’t even try to avoid bumping the guy’s shoulder as he huffs past. Aquila, at his other shoulder, chuckles lowly but still gives his ear a playfully-reprimanding nip.

The hallway is narrow and lined with sliding doors. Tobacco smoke pours through the slots between them, as do the voices of other patrons. Momota waves one hand in front of his face to disperse the haze, already feeling an uncomfortable tickle in the hollow of his chest. 

The third door on the left also happens to be the noisiest, from what he can tell. He hears the rumble of a commotion coming from inside, but the voices all overlap so much that he can’t make sense of a single word between them. None of them sound particularly happy, though.  
  
Momota’s blood runs electric with how anxious he is—both the nervous and excited sort. Puffing up his shoulders, he slots his fingers into the door handle and slides it aside. 

The ruckus dies down almost immediately as all the occupants in the room turn towards the door. There has to be at least a dozen men and another dozen dæmons crowded within the small tatami room. The guests are all most certainly yakuza with the dark splashes of ink sweeping across the hard lines of their exposed arms and backs and _kiseru_ pipes dangling from their lips. One particularly burly fellow near the center of the throng has his back on full display, the boar emblazoned in ink across it a dead ringer for the dæmon lounging to the side. Both men and dæmons regard Momota with hard eyes and clenched jaws.

Still, Momota’s eyes don’t linger on any of them long, beelining for another person in particular. 

His mysterious stranger sits front and center at the head of the messy line of guests. The top half of his undone yukata spills out around his waist like drooping violet petals and his exposed chest is completely bare save for the white cotton bindings that snake around his middle up to the base of his ribcage. There's neither tattoo nor dæmon in sight beyond the waves of fabric. In one hand he holds aloft a cup made of woven bamboo while his other hand is fanned out beside it. Pinched snuggly between the gaps of his fingers are two small, white dice. 

For just a brief moment he looks as startled as the other guests, face slack and dark eyes wide, before his lips curl up at the corners and his eyes crinkle into half-moons. 

It feels like a challenge—one that Momota is itching to act on after a week spent stewing in his anger and curiosity.

Before he can say anything, however, the brief spell that had settled over the room seems to come undone. The man with the boar tattoo slams a hand down beside himself, causing a tall (thankfully sealed) bottle to topple over to the floor. “I stand by what I said before—I ain’t gonna take one more round of this unless you allow for a substitution.”

One of the non-tattooed men flanking Momota’s stranger—a big guy with tight curls, broad shoulders, and a matching handkerchief to the man Momota had met outside—calmly replies, “If you want to use your own dice for play, go start your own den. Otherwise, you play by the house rules.”

“But that sunuvabitch’s gotta be cheating!” one of the yakuza lackeys pipes in, gesturing at the folds of fabric at the dealer’s waist.

In the face of the accusation, the dealer absently regards his nails, his dice still held firmly between his fingers. “I don’t dress like this for fun, you know,” he says, gesturing down at the pale line of his bared chest. “If all you wanted out of coming here was to get me out of my clothes, you could have just said so from the start and saved us all the trouble. I mean, _I’m_ not on the menu, but I can happily refer you to the brothels next door instead.”

A hush falls over the room once more. In lieu of an answer, the gang’s leader just glares and spits down at the floor. “ _Fuck_ you. And _fuck_ this whole place.” 

He’s already staggering to his feet and shoving his arms back into his own undone yukata before the sentence is finished. Around him, other members sporting matching imagery to him in their tattoos and clothes do the same. A few let their hands linger close to the barely-exposed short-swords and knife hilts at their waists, but with the guards’ hands already on theirs, the yakuza members seem to realize that they’d be caught at the disadvantage. Through all the commotion, the dealer smiles placidly.

The atmosphere is tense as the apparent boss makes for the door, and it’s not until every last member—human and dæmon both—of his entourage has stomped past him and out the other end of the hall that Momota feels he can breathe again (this time, refreshingly, for a reason unrelated to the needles in his chest). 

He stares off after them until the clatter of dice draws his attention. When he looks back, he finds the dealer gazing up at him, expectantly shaking the bamboo cup with both hands. 

“Room for one more?” Momota asks, even though he’s already moving to a now vacant spot, _koban_ in hand.

“I thought you’d never ask,” the young man known as Ouma Kokichi says with a grin before letting the dice go. 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

As it turns out, _cho-han_ is not Momota’s game. 

“Mother _fucker,_ ” he hisses as the dice fall 2-5 against his bet of _cho_. 

“I’m almost impressed, Momota-chan,” Ouma says as he sweeps a hand across the tatami to scoop up the dice while his guards gather up the losing bets from the _han_ pile beside him. “You _literally_ have a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right, and you’ve gone and guessed wrong almost every single time!”

The newly coined nickname grates on Momota’s already fraying nerves. “You know, I’m starting to believe that yakuza guy from earlier.”

Ouma holds a hand up to his chest, feigning shock. “Even my darling Momota-chan doubts me now, after all we’ve been through together?” 

“We’ve literally only met three times,” Momota grouses.

“And with every time you’ve disappointed me more and more,” the boy chirps. 

Then, before Momota can reply, Ouma straightens up the stacks of bets and slips the dice into the cup. His eyes go hawk-sharp in an instant. He gives the cup one flourishing shake, then another, before his hand arcs and then slams down on the tatami mat with a solid thud. With the cup down, his entourage begins to call out for bets.

Ouma’s eyes are trained on Momota the whole time, glinting over a haughty, almost coy smile.

Momota scowls and tosses another two wooden chips into the pile, this time on _han._ Around him, the handful of drunkards still clinging to consciousness among the sea of sake flasks and hiccuping dæmons throw in their own bets. 

One hand resting on the top, Ouma leans into Momota’s space and asks, “Last chance—are you _sure_ you want to go with _han_?”

There’s that cocksure challenge in his eyes again. Momota’s got too much pride to let himself quail under it. “Just show the damn dice.”

“Suit yourself!” 

With one last raised eyebrow in Momota’s direction, he peels the lip back. 

The dice wink up at them: 6-3

“Hah!” Momota crows, pumping a fist into the air. Aquila barely avoids being squashed against his head by hopping down from his shoulder at the last second. He lowers the airborne hand to jab his finger into Ouma’s face. “Nice try, asshole.”

One of the guards leans forward to slide a short stack of wooden chips over Momota’s way. When he sits back, Momota can see the dealer shrug and slump back into a lazy sprawl. “Well, if you lost _every_ time then you would just give up. Gotta give you something to keep reeling you in. Call it a trade secret.”

And there goes the wind, right out of Momota’s sails. He tries to mask it by narrowing his eyes, “So you admit that you’ve been cheating?”  
  
Ouma innocently tips his head to the side. “Huh? When did I say that?”

Momota sputters indignantly, but decides it’s not worth the headache to get into a battle of words against this pest. Instead he snaps his mouth shut and reaches down to where Aquila is clawing at the wooden tiles. He snatches up the winnings and then sourly begins to count through them. 

The more he thinks about it, the more he wonders why he even came here in the first place. Yes, he’d gotten rid of the counterfeit coin, and sure Ouma hadn’t said a word edgewise about the legitimacy of it when he’d cashed it in. But as for winning the value back two-fold… well, that’s yet to be seen. Especially if his so-called benefactor is so intent to keep messing with him.

He counts up the last wooden chip: three-thousand _mon_. Shit. That’s even worse off than where he’d supposedly started. 

Maybe it’s the weight of his losses, or maybe it’s the smoke still lingering in the air, but something triggers him to coughing again. He barely manages to get a fist up in front of his mouth before the air rushes out. No one around seems to care a bit as he practically hacks up his lungs—not even Ouma as he regards his nails or his two guards as they clean the playing field—and… well, it’s refreshing, in a way. At least, it’s preferable to the worried glances he’s so used to—the sudden panic and fear in people’s eyes every time he lets loose a cough, as though this one might be the one that shatters him into a million pieces like the frail thing they think he is. 

Eventually, the coughing begins to subside, leaving his throat scratchy and raw. He glances around him at the mess of alcohol flasks and, well, if the other players are too drunk to react to his retching, then maybe they’ll be too drunk to notice him take some of their drink off of their hands.

The corked-up bottle from earlier—the one the man with the boar tattoo had knocked over in his fury—lies casually off to Momota’s side. He makes to reach for it.

Before he can do so, though, the bottle rolls away, just in time for his fingers to glance off of it. He jerks them back, spooked, as Aquila lets out a surprised warble. “What th—”

“No can do, Momota-chan.” He glances up. Across the way, Ouma tugs at a bit of fabric he hadn’t noticed beneath the bottle. Pulled in by momentum, the bottle rolls to a stop at the dealer’s feet. “Unless you want to give up all those earnings you just barely made. Otherwise, that’s too expensive for your greedy paws.”

Momota scowls. His throat protests as he mumbles, “Whatever.”

Well, if he can’t have that, he’ll just have to get his own drink. Momota makes to stand. 

“Aw, leaving so soon?” He glances at Ouma, who now has a sake-cup poised at his lips and one eyebrow cocked in his direction. The bottle from before lies uncorked at his side. Seems the price isn’t an issue for _him_.“I didn’t think you’d be the type to run away when the going gets tough.”

“I’m just getting a drink,” Momota mutters. 

Ouma’s eyes briefly dart down to the faint red smear on the back of his hand, then back up to his face when Momota self-consciously wipes it against his side. “And then what?”

“It’s just a drink—“

“Are you going to leave me here by my lonesome? That’s no way to treat your gracious host, Momota-chan.”

“I…,” Momota falters, the foisted-off coin coming back to mind. He thinks of Maki and Shuuichi and his run-down homestead. He thinks about the copper taste on his tongue. His shoulders slump on a sigh and he offers up his arm for Aquila to gently hop up onto. “Fine. Look, a few thousand _mon_ ’s enough for me. I’m getting out of here on a high note.”

The sake glass lowers. There’s a brief pause. When Ouma speaks, his expression is flat, as is his tone when his eyes go half-lidded and he murmurs, “For all that bravado you really are a coward, aren’t you?”

Irritation boils up, sudden and fierce in Momota’s gut. Aquila puffs up at his shoulder. “The _h_ —”

Then, Ouma slams his glass down on the tatami mat. The other players, who had apparently been oblivious to the rest of the conversation that had happened before them, all jolt to attention at the sound. Their dæmons all fluff up to varying degrees of attentiveness. Even the two guards look to Ouma with questions in their eyes. 

A second passes, then another, before Ouma finally draws in a long breath. “ _Fiiiiine_ ,” he whines, the hard lines of his body suddenly softening as he slumps over like a petulant child. “Ugh, if Momota-chan wants to see the other rooms _so badly_ , I suppose I can tag along.”

“The hell? I never said that!”

But Ouma is already downing the remaining contents of his glass and slipping one arm back into its sleeve. “If you were tired of _cho-han_ all you had to do is say so. I’m not really a fan of the whole ‘playing hard to get’ schtick, for future reference.” He stands up and carelessly steps across the space of play, heedless of the remaining wooden betting chips. 

“Wha—?”

“Sorry, but I’m going on break,” he calls over his shoulder before shooing Momota towards the door. “How about a card game? If you can’t even handle a simple game of chance like _cho-han,_ it might be fun to see you flounder over _koi-koi._ ”

Momota stumbles out of the doorway and into the hall, just barely keeping himself steady over the dip down from the entrance. “Hey, watch it—! I said I’m done!”

“And _I_ say,” Ouma says as he slides the door back into place, “that three-thousand _mon_ is chump change and I’d feel just _horrible_ if you didn’t get your dues.”

Momota throws his hands up to the air. “You’re the one who was rigging the rolls!”

The boy’s eyes glint as he shoots Momota a look over his shoulder. “Oh? Do you have any proof?”

“But you literally said—!”

“I can say a lot of things,” Ouma says, turning back around with a lazy shrug. “I can say that I’m the head of a secret rebellion bent on overthrowing the local _daimyo_ and liberating the masses. Or I can say that I’m the secret bastard son of the shogun trying to make the money to go to the capital and finally confront my father. Or _maybe_ I’m a famous _oyama _ performer who ran away from the stage after my lover bought my contract for me but then tragically died.” He grins, tucking his hands behind his head. “See? People can say a lot of things, but it doesn’t mean they’re true.”

Momota snorts, short and derisive. “So, what, that’s just your thing? Lying and stealing and cheating?”

Ouma rocks back and forth on his bare heels. “Eh, it’s a living!”

“Yeah, well, not one I want any part in,” Momota replies, turning to leave. 

“I dunno,” he hears Ouma say from behind him. “You seem to be doing a pretty good job of it.”

Momota turns one narrowed eye over his shoulder. “Of what?”

“Lying.”

Momota frowns. “I haven’t lied.”

“No, not to me. Believe me, I’d know,” Ouma says, cocking a sly eyebrow at him. “But you’re doing a real good job of lying to yourself, huh?”

Momota flinches internally even as he attempts to mask it with a snarl. “The fuck do you know?” he snaps. 

Ouma tips his chin at Momota’s hand. “What’s the money for?”

Aquila’s claws bite sharply into Momota’s shoulder, making him hiss out a curse. Ouma looks as placid as ever, casually leaning up against one of the building’s support beams. He says, “I’d guess it’s for that nasty cough of yours. Oh, you can chalk that up as another reason I couldn’t sleep the other night. Really, one _ryo_ —phony or not—was _not_ what your hospitality was worth.”

Momota doesn’t say anything in response, so Ouma continues. “So! My guess is you’ve got the Consumption or something like it, and that’s not easy to treat completely. I’m thinking you need to get East and even then you’ve got doctors and medicine and blah, blah, blah. Point is, that’s not something three-thousand _mon’s_ gonna cover.”

“I’ll get the money elsewhere,” Momota cuts in.

Ouma’s tempo slows, and he looks contemplative for a moment before he asks, “How much, exactly, are you trying to get?”

“I—,” Momota interjects, then pauses. When he speaks again, it’s mumbled. “I dunno. Just… enough.”

“Enough?”

“Yeah, _enough_. Enough to cover it.”

“ _It?_ ” 

Momota throws his arms up, exasperated. “The transport, a-and the medicine, y’know just… all of that!”

“Kaito…,” Aquila coos into his ear.

Her voice is enough to get him to check himself, and he drops his arms with a huff. He lets out a few breathy wheezes too, but nothing serious. 

“Here’s what I think,” Ouma says, slower but no less dangerous. “I think you don’t have a goal in mind. In fact, I don’t even think the money’s for you in the end. Sure, maybe you tell people that, but I’d expect more passion, more desperation out of a guy fighting for his life, y’know?”

His eyes bore into Momota’s from the shadow he’s taken up position in. “See, I think you’ve already given up and you’re just trying to scrounge up as much money as you can before you kick the proverbial bucket. Am I right?” 

Momota doesn’t reply, tongue trapped firmly within his clenched jaw. His lack of an answer seems to be enough. 

Ouma smirks at him, but it lacks any mirth. “Look at that! I’m two for two on my guesses—a liar _and_ a coward.” Then he pushes off the support beam and strolls over to Momota. Once he’s right up in his space, he tips his head up and says, quiet enough for just the two of them to hear, “But, hey, what do I know? People can say a lot of things, but it doesn’t mean they’re true.”

Momota refuses to break their gaze, even as he fights back the bitter pull of his lips and the sick churning in his stomach.

“Here’s a hint,” Ouma says, voice pitched down low. “Take the door on your left and look for the _hanafuda _ dealer with the short hair and the checkered handkerchief. Bet _han_ on her opening roll and you’re guaranteed to go first. Then go for the paulownia, chrysanthemum, and bush-clover suits whenever you can play on them. She’ll know.”

With that he reaches up a hand to Momota’s cheek and gives it two patronizing pats. As he draws the hand away, Momota feels a sudden weight tug down the pocket of his clothes. 

He keeps his eyes stubbornly trained on the floor as Ouma slips away.

When his hand eventually dips into his pocket, he feels the familiar weight of the counterfeit _koban,_ and he scowls.

 

 

 

 

He wins seven hands of _hanafuda_ in a row off the now twice cashed-in counterfeit. The yakuza scum bark up a storm, but still retreat with their tails between their legs at their losses. The dealer and the snake curled around her neck both send him a knowing smile as she cleans up the cards and he makes off with nine-thousand _mon_. 

It’s a victory, but a hollow one.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wanted to get this out before leaving my apartment for 20+ hours of travel. Thank you to everyone who's left kudos and comments so far! They've been a big motivator during an otherwise hectic week.
> 
> Also, future updates probably won't be posted as closely together as Ch1 & Ch2 were, but I've got a large chunk written and most of it planned out so no need to fear on that front!


	3. iii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Momota finds an answer, and with it, more questions.

分福茶釜

_Bunbuku Chagama_

 

 

“ _Bake-danuki_ ,” Yumeno says, nodding sagely as she lazily tips her broomstick back and forth between her hands. “And it definitely sounds like you got yourself caught up with a nasty little spirit.”

“A _tanuki_ spirit?” Momota asks, barely hiding the traitorous nervous waver in his voice behind his skepticism. “ _That’s_ what you think this is?”

She shrugs. “You asked me for my wisdom and I’m giving it to you.”

Momota tiredly sweeps a hand down his face, leaning further against the vermillion pillar of the _torii_ gate marking the entrance to the humble shrine. “I think I liked it better when I thought I was dreaming,” he mutters into his palm.

“I know it’s sometimes hard to believe the wonders of the world of _yokai_ ,” she continues in her usual, slow deadpan. “But you can be rest assured that I’m using all of my spiritual knowledge and expertise to advise you right now.”

Momota looks down at the broom in her hand and then out at the rest of the shrine pavilion, noticeably patchy in its cleaning job. Over in a sunny spot along the shrine’s wrap-around _engawa_ , her bushy-tailed red-squirrel dæmon lazily naps through the day. 

“Right…,” Momota says, unconvinced.

“Just consider the facts,” she continues, hopping up to take a seat next to her dæmon. The poor thing springs up from his nap at the resulting sound, but with the crisis averted, curls up and goes right back to sleep. She begins to count off on her fingers, the loose hang of her red _hakama_ fluttering in the wind as she swings her legs back and forth. “First—from all that you’ve told me about him, this guy’s sounds like a class-A trickster type.”

Momota grimaces, “That’s an understatement.”

“Second—he’s got no dæmon.”

“Wait, that’s a _yokai_ thing?” Momota asks. “Having no dæmon?”

“Oh yeah, that’s a surefire sign of a _yokai_ if I’ve ever seen one. Dæmons are already ancestral spirits themselves, so the idea of a spirit having its _own_ spirit is a little redundant,” she replies, nodding sagely. Then she pauses to consider that thought. “Or it could be he’s being _possessed_ by a tanuki spirit. That’s definitely got precedent too, but that doesn’t explain the dæmon situation…” Another pause before she shrugs. “Well either way, it’s a tanuki in some form.”

“Why are you so bent on it being a tanuki anyway?” Momota asks as he leans up against the raised walkway next to her. “There are all sorts of other weird shapeshifting _yokai_ out there, aren’t there?”

“That’s because of the third and fourth reasons,” she says, wiggling the last of her raised fingers.

“And that is?”

“The counterfeit gold,” she says. “Making fake gold out of leaves and pawning it off on unsuspecting idiots is basically their calling card.”

He scowls at the jab. “And?” he grits out.

“And he may be finicky,” Yumeno points the remaining finger at him. “but he’s paying back a debt in one way or another. That’s without a doubt classic tanuki lore.”

“A debt?”

“Come on, you don’t have to work at a shrine like me to know all the stories. Tanuki always repay their debts. Like that one little rascal that turned into a teapot to repay the beggar who saved his life.” She aims a distant, half-baked smile at him. "I always liked that story. Can’t remember what it's called, but it’s a good one.” Then she flops back onto the wooden walkway, still idly kicking her legs. “Hey, do you think this Ouma fellow of yours can turn into a teapot too? That'd be crazy to see.”

Momota ignores her. “Well if it is a debt, it’s barely one to begin with—I just let the guy stay in my ratty old house during the storm. He didn't even stick around to thank me afterwards.”

“A debt’s a debt,” she says with a shrug. “Doesn’t matter how small.”

Momota pinches at the bridge of his nose to stave off his growing headache. “Look, I really don’t think repaying me is this guy’s priority. You should have seen him at the gambling hall. He seemed fine with leaving me out to dry as long as it entertained him in the end.”

Yumeno yawns, reaching her arm over to scratch at the squirrel’s belly as she settles in for a catnap of her own. “Yep,” she says, popping the _p_ sound. “ _Classic_ tanuki.”

The squirrel kicks at the air, very pleased with the treatment. Momota sighs and heads off.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

When Momota sneaks into the private hunting grounds of the local estate later in the afternoon, as is kind of his routine these days, Maki still has yet to arrive. That’s a bit divergent from the routine, but he only lingers on that thought for a moment as he lifts his arm to propel Aquila into flight. She takes off to the sky like a firecracker, letting loose a jubilant screech as she goes. Satisfied, Momota hunkers down into his usual spot below the towering oak tree with the target carved into its trunk. 

With time to kill, he pulls out a tiny knife out from the _obi_ at his waist and picks up a small lump of wood from the base of the tree and begins to thoughtlessly whittle away at it. This had been Shuuichi’s idea, several months earlier. Something about it helping him focus on a task and forcibly relax. The point was to de-stress, somewhere secluded with fresh air away from strangers' pipe smoke and burning fields, and it’s not medicine, but anything that buys him more time is something.

_As if you care about more time_.

His knife slices through the wood with more force than necessary, sending a huge chunk flying across the open patch of grass.

Gritting his teeth, he gets back to work.

Minutes go by, then an hour. It’s only when the sun is barely touching the line of the horizon that Momota’s mindless ritual is disturbed. The only warning he gets is a small snap from the tree above him before a large, black cat bounds down from a lofty branch and lands with impossible grace in front of him. Momota jerks back and fumbles with his knife before he can accidentally stab himself in the leg. 

“Come on, can you give a guy some warning next time?” he grouses, flipping the blade over in his hand and impaling it into the loamy soil beneath him. 

Nirav doesn’t say anything, as usual. Momota knows not to expect much interaction from the dæmon, as he’s usually content to do his own thing. That thing, right now, seems to be prowling the open patch of trimmed grass before them, head tracking just barely above the line of the taller grass surrounding the perimeter. In the waning daylight, the faint spots that speckle through the dæmon’s dark coat are barely visible, but his eyes burn a deep amber against the golden sunset when they flick back to Momota. 

Another color catches the light, just around the cut of his muzzle. _Red_. 

Momota’s brow dips down sharply and he opens his mouth to ask.

“Nirav,” a voice cuts in, razor sharp, before he can get a word in edgewise. Momota glances back over his shoulder and there’s Maki, still dressed in the fineries of the rest of the estate’s guards. As she strides over to them, though, she lets pieces of her plated armor fall to the ground in heaps until she’s down to nothing but her simple shirt and _hakama_. Finally, she reaches up and pulls the headband free from her hair and lets it spill out across her back. 

Momota offers her a smile as she nears. “Rough day?”

She lets out a derisive snort of hot air as she strides past him towards her dæmon.

“Sounds like there’s a story there,” he prompts.  


“There is,” she says in passing, “but not one for your ears.”

As she kneels down beside her dæmon, she pulls a cloth from her waistband. When she gently wipes away at his mouth with it, Momota can see familiar copper smears across the fabric.

His wince is more sad than disgusted, more conflicted than outright disappointed. 

Maki sighs, deflating under his knowing gaze as she folds the handkerchief away. “Do you really want to know whose blood it is?” she murmurs.

A familiar feeling twists in Momota’s gut like a hot knife—something stuck between guilt and anger. The latter is never aimed at her, though.

“I just… don’t like seeing you get used by those snooty, rich assholes like this,” he mutters, his brow a hard line dipping downward as he nods in the direction of the castle walls. “If it weren’t for that damn contract you wouldn’t ha—”

“We all have parts to play, Momota,” she replies. Her gaze is hard and resolute, as is the proud line of her back as she folds down onto her knees before him. Nirav curls his body around her and watches Momota carefully, tail flicking back and forth, back and forth. “And there’s no use in staying hung up on impossible _what ifs._ ” 

They do have parts to play. Her part, as she always reminds him, is fulfilling the wills of the local _daimyo_ an his court from up in their lofty, walled-off castle. Saihara's part, back in town, is to support his uncle and his wild, eccentric whims, because what else does he have left in the absence of parents and the money to support himself? Momota’s part—the role he’s given himself considering his circumstances—sits in a wooden box beneath his floorboards, recently far heavier with coin than it had ever been before and far less impossible than she thinks.

_But you won’t tell her about that, will you? Because that would be admitting the truth._

Clenching his fists at his side, Momota keeps his tone light and says, instead, “Wanna weigh in on something?”

It’s barely noticeable, but Maki’s shoulders loosen and the line of her mouth goes a little less tense at the diversion. “If it will get you to stop prodding your nose into business that doesn’t concern you, then by all means.”

He grins at her familiar dryness. The beating of wings signals Aquila’s return, as she swoops down into the space. She must be feeling the same urge to lighten the conversation as he does, as she immediately struts over to playfully nip at Nirav’s tail. The cat kicks at her weakly and the corners of Maki’s eyes soften. Something warms in Momota’s chest as he starts talking. 

“I went down to the shrine today. Yumeno—you know her, right? The tiny one with the little red squirrel?”

Maki rolls her eyes, and Nirav matches her. “Yes, Momota. Your town only has about seven extended families living in it, and that’s being generous.”

“Well, I told her about what happened last week,” he continues, throwing his arms behind his head and leaning back against the trunk of the tree. “Y’know what she thinks? She thinks I ran in with a _yokai._   _That’s_ why that little bastard didn’t have a dæmon. Kinda freaky, huh?”

Aquila suddenly flutters back as one of Nirav’s kicks hits a little too hard. Instead of joining in on his levity, Maki’s expression hardens once more. “You’re still thinking about that?” she asks.

Momota let’s out a short laugh and offers his arm out to his dæmon as she sourly hops back to his side. “Well, the whole situation’s kind of hard to forget.”

“Well you should,” Maki snaps. “Yakuza are bad news. You should leave it at that.”

He tips his head to the side in thought, scritching his fingers into the feathers at Aquila’s head. “I mean, of course there were yakuza there, but to tell you the truth I’m not sure if the guy was one of ‘em. He didn’t have any tattoos, for starters—“

“What does it matter?” Maki interrupts, obviously unaffected by his casual attitude. “He obviously associates with them, and that’s reason enough to let it go.”

“Whoa, hey, Harumaki.” Her expression twists up into something like a scowl even as a flush dusts her cheeks at the nickname. He holds his hands up defensively, shoots her a sheepish smile to placate her. “It’s already over. I’m back in one piece and I’ve got a nice stack of cash for it. No harm, no foul.”

Her eyes cut to the side angrily as the red fades from her cheeks. “It shouldn’t have even been a thing in the first place,” she mutters lowly.

“The point is,” he interrupts before she can reprimand him further, “that Yumeno says this kind of _yokai_ is bound by debts, or something, and if the nice stash of money I have now is any indication, that debt is paid, so that’s the last of that, okay?”

She seems to think this over for a long moment before her gaze dips back to his. “You’ll let it go?” 

He pauses, then gives her a curt nod. “I’ll let it go.”

Maki’s mouth purses into a thin line, and she straightens and says, “Fine. Put it behind you and focus on more important things. Alright?”

Right, important things. Like safe passage to the capital and expensive remedies. Like friends displaced to crowded cities longing for freedom or friends in high-walled castles bound by the decade-old contracts forced upon them. Like secret stashes of coins under floorboards and wishes on paper lanterns.

Maki’s eyes bore into him. Momota licks his lips and nods around a smile that doesn’t feel all there. “Yeah, I promise.”

A memory of a crescent moon grin. _What did I say—a liar and a coward._

His hand grips around the wooden carving too hard, causing him to flinch as a sharp point bites into his palm. When he spreads his fingers to look at what he’d made while lost in thought, the familiar sick bite of guilt and anger comes back to gnaw at his insides.

As he scowls down at it, the small, carved form of a tanuki stares back at him, mockingly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short, Ouma-less interlude this time. With round one of moving mostly finished, I should have more time to write and churn the rest of this out. Especially looking forward to doing that, considering I'd like to get something in for saioumota week. Fingers crossed...


	4. iv

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On a familiar path, Momota meets a familiar face (not once, but twice).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (let's pretend I didn't mess up the publish date)

袋下げ

_fukuro-sage_

 

The new _shoji_ screen is back in place by the time the month of _Fumizuki_ draws to a close. Routines easily settle back into place as well. Momota starts to pick up odd jobs around town again, ones that won’t trigger his cough too badly, and with the _bon_ festivities out of the way, Shuuichi’s weekly supply runs to town fall back into regularity as well. Maki still shows up late for their meetings—looking more and more tired by the day—but even though she won’t tell him why, he’s just glad she continues to show up unharmed.

It’s fine, he tells himself as he chips away at another small wood carving at the crest of another hot, summer day. Routine is good, isn’t it? 

“That pig is coming along nicely,” Aquila comments, peering down at his handiwork from the awning of the roof above him.

Momota wilts slightly, frowning at the misshapen lump of wood and turning it over a few times. “It’s supposed to be a rabbit,” he mutters, downcast.

A few seconds pass. “Well, then… it’s a very creative rabbit!” his dæmon hesitantly replies.

He smooths a finger over the shorter-than-anticipated ears on the small wooden figure and sighs before tossing it aside. “Hey,” he asks, leaning back to peer up at her. "What d’ya say to taking a walk around the hunting grounds? I’ve gotta stretch my legs.”

Aquila cocks her head as he gazes at her upside-down. “Well it’s still only noon, so Maki won’t like that. And you don’t know if the _daimyo_ and his entourage are out today or not. We’ve been lucky so far, but that could always change.”

“Then we’ll just peek in and see,” he says, pushing himself up and stretching out the crick in his neck. It pops noisily. “I just don’t like sitting around here and neither do you. I need to get out and do something, yknow?”

Aquila swoops down to a low bush at his side. “What you need to do is rest,” she says, fixing him with an aptly-hawkish gaze.

“Oh not you too,” he groans. “I do rest. I’ve _been_ resting!”

“Not yesterday. We were out tending to the fields because _someone_ couldn’t sit still for more than a few hours. Remember where that got us later in the day?”

Momota’s face scrunches up and he crosses his arms, refusing to prove her right. 

She answers for him anyway. “It got us passed out in a rice paddy with mud up to your neck and all up in my feathers, not to mention the Chabashira girl and her dæmon barking up a storm at us. Not the most pleasant wakeup, was it?” Aquila fluffs up, her feather standing on end around the crown of her head. “We already have plans to be there later anyway, so let’s just wait a little while longer. How about brewing up the tea Shuuichi brought you? I know you haven’t had any today.”

Momota stubbornly kicks at a rock by his foot and groans. “C’mon, it’s too hot for tea. Especially stuff that tastes _that_ bad.”

“It’s not supposed to taste good, it’s _medicine_ ,” Aquila retorts, spreading her wings peevishly. “Medicine he brought all the way here for _you_. You could show him some gratitude.”

“I’m not doing this now,” Momota grumbles, turning his back to her. 

“Then when _should_ we do this, Kaito?” He hears her hop along the line of bushes as he starts walking. “This evening? Tomorrow? The day after tomorrow?”

He waves a hand in the air dismissively. “I’ll have some after we get back, when it’s cooler out! It’s just a walk!”

“Kaito!” Aquila calls. He hears her wings beat as she takes to the air. “Kaito!”

He ducks down through a line of low-hanging branches, ignoring her.

Unable to easily follow after him, Aquila swoops over the trees instead. “ _Gods_ ,” her voice echoes out, growing more distant by the second, “sometimes you can be so stubborn and bullish and immature you overgrown oaf of a—“

But then she’s too far above the canopy overhead for him to hear her grousing over the din of the cicadas. Momota huffs, ducking around a low-leaning bamboo stalk. Whatever. She’ll have cooled off by the time the woods thin out again, he reasons as he makes his way further down the small mountain path. The bond between them tugs at the center of his chest dully at the distance, not unlike the usual ache that lives there. He rubs at it idly as he walks.

Instead of taking the main path to the center of the village, he follows the branching route along the curve of the mountain. It’s a less steep slope, still canopied by thick oak branches and walls and walls of rustling bamboo. The light filters in in vivid greens at his feet, like stars against the shadows in the dirt. Without Aquila to make conversation with, Momota entertains himself, tracing fake constellations in the dappled sunspots as he follows the long, back road towards the hunting grounds and the walled off estate on the hill.

It’s loads better than staying cooped up at home, but the air is thick with humidity and baked hot by the summer sun. Even in the shade the hot air wraps around him like a heavy shroud, weighing down every step and every breath as he goes. It occurs to him belatedly that maybe he should have had something to drink before leaving. Not the nasty tea, he thinks, wiping a loose cotton sleeve over his sweat-slicked brow, but something. 

Thinking about the tea twangs out a guilty note from his heartstrings again. Of course it’s not Shuuichi’s fault the stuff tastes bad, and it’s all born of good intentions—he _knows_. For all the trouble his friend had gone through to bring it to him, it only makes sense that he should take it gladly and drink it down without complaint—stinging, ginger aftertaste and all. 

A few months ago he wouldn’t have questioned it for a _moment_ , but now…

Well, now it’s the tea. Before that it had been a pricy mix of ginseng and herbs bought off of a traveling priest from Kyoto. Even before that had been a tonic snuck out of the Portuguese trade posts that somehow wound up in the hands of Shuuichi’s eccentric uncle. Countless remedies and old wives’ tales—all presented to him as gifts, all without Shuuichi ever asking for anything in return, and it feels _so_ …

Momota scrubs a hand through his hair and lets out a rough sigh. Really, it all boils back down to the two opposing shades of his guilt: the guilt of not putting his friends’ gifts to good use versus the guilt of taking and taking and _taking_ and never being able to give back. It’s just that after months of it, one gnaws at his insides more than the other, and he’s far too tired to properly fight that weariness anymore. 

But he’ll drink the tea, eventually. Even if it’s just another dead end. He’ll do it for Shuuichi, and for Maki. If it’s for them and their peace of mind, he’ll make himself do it, he resolves. 

An eagle shriek above him shakes him out of the thought. The trees are thinning out further up ahead and he can see Aquila dive to and fro on the wind through the spaces in the foliage. Just beside him is the first marker of his destination—the southern-most corner of the estate’s walls. 

Suddenly, somewhere above him, a branch snaps. His head tips up to the sound only to find a white, ghostly shroud descending down upon him, faster than he can really react. 

He yells, flinging his arms up to protect against whatever the thing coming for him is, but that only sets off a chain reaction in his chest. A cough punches out of him, sending him off balance and stumbling back with the force of it. His shoulder knocks into a nearby bamboo stalk, which rattles against its companions, stirring up an echoing cacophony throughout the grove. 

“ _Shit_ ,” he hears from somewhere up in the trees, while even farther above that another voice calls out, “Kaito?” 

As he bends over and drags out a few wheezing breaths, he hears a hushed whisper too soft to understand, the flutter of wings, and finally the echo of Aquila’s cry somewhere far above the trees but growing closer. He lifts his chin far enough to get a glimpse at whatever strange ghost or _yokai_ or what had been coming for him… and stops. 

There, lying in the center of the dusty path, is nothing but a white, burlap sack. 

“Momota-chan!” a voice calls out from somewhere above him. “I can’t believe you’re not dead yet!”

The glare he’d already been aiming at the offending bag falls into a grimace. So the bag itself hadn’t been a _yokai_ , but that didn’t mean spirits weren’t still lurking these woods regardless.

“Man, I was so sure you’d kicked the proverbial bucket when you didn’t come back around to visit me!” Ouma continues to say from up in his perch. Momota uses the bamboo stalk as a crutch to help straighten up again, and he looks up to find the boy grinning down at him from the branches of a towering camphor tree. “But somehow here you are, still living and breathing, even with that death-wish of yours. Congratulations! Or maybe my condolences? Honestly, I’m not sure which outcome it was that you preferred.”

“The hell are you doing here, Ouma?” Momota growls up at him. 

“Oh, nice deflection,” the boy says, nodding appraisingly as he kicks his legs back and forth in the air just above Momota’s head. “Hey, I’ve got one of my own—could you toss that bag back up to me?”

Momota turns back to look at the crumpled up sack. Yumeno’s verdict niggles at the back of his mind, and as if summoned by the thought of dæmons (or lack thereof), Aquila finally dips through the canopy and down to Momota’s shoulder. She warbles worriedly into his ear as he stomps over to grab the bag. “Of course that was you,” he mutters up to the trickster spirit in the tree as he bends down to snatch it up.

“That it was! So sorry, my hand slipped and down it went. Still, it was worth it for the show I got in the end. You really showed that bag what for, huh?”

Momota feels his cheeks darken and his face crumples sourly as Ouma mimics punching at the air. “What’s even in this anyway?” he grunts, shaking the weight of the bag. 

“Well you’re the one who defeated that nasty ol’ ghost, big guy,” Ouma replies, leaning back against the trunk with a haughty shrug. “I suppose you’re more than welcome to the spoils of your vicious battle.”

Shooting Ouma a narrow-eyed look, he cautiously reaches into the bag. Aquila picks anxiously at his shirt with her claws, but thankfully, his fingers only find smooth wood and what feels like several pieces of scrapped parchment at the bottom of the satchel. When he pulls the large, hard object out, he finds it to be a _hyotan_ water gourd, about as long as his forearm.

“And there’s your prize,” Ouma quips. “Sorry if you were hoping to nab some more money off of me. Here I thought you’d learned the first time, but…”

“That’s not what I—,” Momota cuts himself off. He licks at his dry lips and frowns. “Look, do you want it back or not?”

The boy blinks down at him owlishly. “What, you’re not gonna have some? It’s just water.”

Momota glares back. “I don’t want any.”

Ouma considers him for a moment, then shrugs again. “I mean, do what you want, I guess. If you’re so quick to chase death-by-heat-stroke, then go for it. I won’t stop you.”

“I—,” Momota starts to snap, but he deflates as quickly as he’d risen to the bait. And it is bait, he knows it. If that’s the trickster side of this damned _tanuki_ spirit, trying to stir up trouble for his own entertainment, then he doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction. 

… But still, his throat aches and he still feels flushed from the walk and earlier scare.

His eyes dart back up to look at Ouma, but the other boy’s already turned his attention to something else tucked in the palm of his hand. It looks like another scrap of paper, not unlike the one he’d given Momota, way back at their meeting on the river-bank. 

Momota looks back at the gourd while Ouma isn’t looking. When he sloshes it a few times, it still sounds half-full. 

With Ouma’s eyes off of him, Momota yanks the stopper out with a pop and takes a long, refreshing pull from it. The cool water immediately chases the summer heat away and soothes the raw skin of his throat almost instantly. He starts with one gulp, then another, and another yet before he can stop himself. When he pulls it away a moment later with a crisp, wet gasp, the gourd is completely empty. Aquila fixes him with an unreadable look as he stoppers up the bottle once more.

“Aw man,” he hears Ouma whine. “Where am I gonna fill that up again?” 

“You’re the one who offered,” Momota grumbles as he lobs the bag back up at him. 

Ouma catches it, but he seems to not judge the momentum right and starts to tip backwards off of the branch. Sucking in a sharp breath, Momota instinctively moves to dash forward, but then—legs hooked around the smooth bark of the branch—Ouma simply swings back around until he hangs completely upside-down, hair now falling in a messy curtain and forehead flushing pink at the blood rush. At Momota’s spooked expression, he laughs, twisting at the waist and tucking his arms behind his head to let the bag dangle from the crook of his elbow. “Careful there, don’t want to upset that nasty cough of yours. Though I appreciate the sentiment. My hero!”

Ugh. Momota doesn’t have time for this. With a dismissive grunt, he starts off towards his main destination again. As he passes by, he checks one of Ouma’s elbows with his shoulder, causing the boy to sway slightly. “As if you care,” he tosses over his shoulder at the boy.

“Ah, you got me!” Behind him Momota hears the sound of feet touching down on dirt. Aquila tips her head back, no doubt watching their tailer with sharp eyes as he falls into step behind them.

Momota continues past the castle corner and follows the dilapidated path as it hugs the wall. After several minutes and several more steps in irritating silence, he whips back around when Ouma’s footsteps fail to stop trailing him. “Why are you following me?”

Ouma scoffs, bringing up an offended hand to his chest. “Who says I’m following you? Maybe _you’re_ the one in _my_ way.”

“Oh bullshit,” Momota lobs back. He hikes up his shoulders as he crosses his arms and digs in his feet to stand his ground. Aquila squawks as she’s shoved from her perch. Just like he predicted though, Ouma doesn’t continue on. Instead he also stops a few paces away from Momota, casually rocking back and forth on his heels. 

Momota remembers a thought from earlier. “I already asked,” he says, “but what are you even doing here anyway? That gambling hall of yours is back in town, way on the other side of the valley.”

“So personal, Momota-chan,” Ouma says, mimicking his wide-legged stance with a tilted chin and a taunting smirk. “Why are you so interested in my business? Did you get a taste of the forbidden fruit and now you can’t quit?”

Momota’s expression twists at his wording. “No, I’m just wondering why a petty gambler’s poking his nose around here of all places.”

“Petty gambler?” Ouma places his hands at his hips and affects a childish pout. “Well that’s rude. I thought I told you, I’m the Emperor’s long lost bastard son, not some run-of-the-mill crook! Or have you already forgotten?”

Momota’s mouth moves before can stop himself. “I thought it was the _shogun’s_ son?”

Ouma’s expression lights up. “So you _were_ paying attention! And here I thought that head of yours was filled with nothing but rocks and nasty, bloody phlegm.”

Momota sputters. “That’s beside the point!” He marches up to Ouma. The boy regards him cooly as Momota pokes a finger into his chest. “Why are you here?”

“Well I could say the same for you, now, couldn’t I? 

“ _I’m_ meeting a friend,” Momota retorts.

Ouma cocks his head. “All the way out here? That’s some friend you’ve got.”

“Well I _have_ to come out here because she’s not al—,” Momota cuts himself off, pinching the bridge of his nose. “That doesn’t matter and it doesn’t tell me why _you’re_ here.”

“Hmm, would you believe me if I said I came all the way out to see you?” Ouma asks, waggling his eyebrows up at him.

Momota fixes him with an unimpressed frown. “No.”

The boy sighs and shakes his head. “No, of course not. I've had enough of your mite-infested hospitality for one lifetime, thanks.”

“That’s still not an answer.”

Ouma blinks back at him. “An answer? An answer to what?”

“What you’re doing here!” Momota cries, exasperated. Several birds take flight, startled out of the canopy of trees above them. A crow caws out, its voice echoing through the valley.

Ouma perks up. “Oh. Well that’s easy,” he says, a new note of mischief in his tone. Then his head cocks sideways and his eyes tip up towards somewhere beyond Momota’s head. “I’m stalling.”

Momota’s steady stance falters. “Wait, what?”

But Ouma’s not really paying attention to him anymore. Instead, he turns and looks down the small ravine beside the mountain path, out in the direction of the burbling sound of a stream that lies somewhere beyond it. His gaze goes sharp as he peers at something in the distance, but when Momota tries to track his line of sight, he doesn’t see anything of note. 

The boy’s contemplative expression doesn’t falter as walks off, waving a hand at Momota in a shooing gesture. “Well, Momota-chan, it’s been fun. Enjoy your terrible hike with your terrible friend. Try not to hack up your lungs before you get back, or else you and that dæmon of yours will become nothing but wild-boar feed by the morning.”

Before Momota can say or do anything, Ouma shoots him a patronizing smile before hopping down off the side of the path. His sandals sink into the loamy soil and he rides the resulting landslip partially down the slope with graceful ease. After several yards, when the dirt doesn’t carry him any further, he tips his feet out of his straw sandals, plucks them up with the hand holding the burlap sack, and turns to look back up at Momota. With a cocky wave and a bow, he tosses his bag and shoes over one shoulder and heads through the foliage, off into the deep green shadows of the deeper parts of the wood—so far until Momota can’t see him any longer. 

“I could follow him a little,” Aquila says as she alights herself back on his shoulder. “Figure out what that shifty _tanuki’s_ deal is out there.”

Momota licks his lips, far less parched than earlier, and just sighs. “Nah,” he says, turning them back down the path. “Don’t bother. Let’s just keep going."

She doesn’t say anything as he starts down the narrow dirt road, but from what he can tell, her eyes never once leave the distant hollow of the forest.

 

 

 

After they find the hunting grounds empty of hunting parties, Momota and Aquila loop around the fields twice, entertaining themselves by plucking plump koi from the fancy ponds and scavenging scrap wood for later carving projects. Though they wait out the rest of the afternoon beneath the familiar oak tree littered with arrow pocks, Maki never shows.

 

 

 

She does, however, appear on a sudden patrol through the village the following night. When she ducks out of formation, it’s to offer not an apology to Momota, but a warning. 

“There’s been unrest further in town,” she whispers to him behind the cover of a store sign as her superiors head off down another street. Nirav paces agitatedly back and forth across the village path, tail lashing through the air like a snake waiting to strike. “The _daimyo_ is antsy, and he wants the insurrection quashed as soon as possible. Thankfully, the village here seems to be far enough outside its influence.”

“What about Shuuichi?”

Maki nods. “Safe, and uninvolved as far as I know. He and his uncle might help the _doushin_ investigate, but that’s as much as he told me.”

Momota grabs her wrist when she turns to leave. “What can I do?” he whispers back imploringly, though it makes his throat twitch with the urge to cough.

Though the bags under her eyes are dark and heavy, her gaze is just as sharp and haunting as her dæmon’s when she snaps it up at him. 

“Stay here, and don’t get involved.” It’s both a demand and a plea. 

Then someone calls her name from a few houses down. She nods at Momota once—curt and all business as she slips back into her role—then pulls her arm back from his loose fingers and hurries off into the shadows again. 

Momota clenches his hands into fists at his side, feeling as useless as ever as he shuffles back home.

 

 

 

And it’s on that familiar path on a familiar summer night like any other that he comes across a familiar form, lying collapsed and bloodied in the bright, cloudless moonlight.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well I really wanted to get something out for saioumota week, but life got a little too busy. Thankfully, it's not like those ideas I had are gone! I'll hopefully try to get to them after I finish this project and get my life a little more settled. In the meantime, I'd expect 2-3 more chapters out of this!


	5. v

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A deal is struck and a deadline (of sorts) set.

  


  


   


  


赤殿中

_akadenchuu_

  


  


   


   


Aquila reacts to the sight of the body in the road first, taking flight from Momota’s shoulder and swooping up the dirt path. Momota isn’t far behind, or at least he tries not to be.

Ouma’s back—and it is Ouma, he finds as he closes in, that messy sweep of hair so easily recognizable—is facing them, but there’s an unsettlingly unnatural curve to his spine, like a doll carelessly tossed to the side by a child. A chill runs through Momota, top to bottom. 

He jogs up to the two of them and stumbles down onto his knees in his instinctive panic. Aquila shuffles agitatedly as her head darts back and forth, fighting the urge to touch the huddled form. “Hurry up and check him, Kaito,” she chatters nervously. “You know I can’t and I just can’t _stand_ the suspense not knowing if he’s…” She cuts herself off with the snap of her beak.

Momota swallows, his hand hovering in the air weakly. With a grimace, he reaches his hand out to shakily press the pads of his fingers to the line of Ouma’s throat.

He waits a beat, then another. The blood in his veins starts to run cold like the cool skin under his fingers, and—

“Careful, big guy.”

Momota yelps out a curse, reeling his hand back like he’d touched a white-hot iron. Even Aquila jumps back, wings immediately fanned outwards in defense. 

Ouma laughs, but the sound is hoarse and strained. “You might give a guy the wrong impression,” he continues.

“What the _fuck_ , Ouma?” Momota hisses, tentatively inching forward again. “What are you _doing_ here?”

“Is that the only question you know how to ask?” Ouma’s hair curtains his face messily, clumped together around his forehead by sticky, red blood. While his teeth flash cockily in the moonlight, his eyes remain heavy-lidded. Every so often the whites of them show through the slit of his lids before he seems to catch himself and force them back into focus. “Boooring, Momota-chan. How am I supposed to stay conscious if you won’t keep me entertained?”

“Shit.” Momota drags shaking fingers through his hair. “ _Shit_. What the hell even happened to you?”

“Yeesh, nothing but boring questions from you today,” Ouma mumbles into the ground. With a sharp inhale, he drags one arm up. It wobbles in the air as he tries to plant it in the dirt, then he shakily starts to push his torso up. “Run along home, Momota-chan, before the ghosts and ghouls of this land come out to spirit you away along with me.”

“Hey, don’t—,“ Momota tries to say, but before he can, Ouma’s arm gives way and he lands face-first in the dirt again. What follows is a stream of uncomfortably cheerful (if not mildly deranged) laughter, considering the situation. 

Before he can think much about the consequences, Momota’s already ducking down and taking Ouma’s limp arm in his hand. For how small the guy is, Momota still struggles to lift the dead weight of him up and across his back.

“So handsy,” Ouma says, but his voice is muffled as his face drags across Momota’s shoulder blades. His head finally settles into the crook of Momota’s neck and shoulder “Oof,” he mumbles into Momota’s collarbone.“If you’re going to have your way with me, at least be gentle.”

“Would you just shut _up,_ ” Momota grits out, tugging Ouma’s arms each over one shoulder and hoisting him up onto his back. 

“Oh sure, but then how would you know when I’m good and truly dead?” Ouma replies, but it sounds odd and molasses-thick. “Oh, tell you what? You keep me talking and I’ll keep you talking, ‘n then we’ll both know when th’ other finally keels over and dies. Seeing as we’re both on death’s doorstep ’n all.”

Momota swallows down a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach as he starts walking forward. “Are you always this fucking morbid?” 

“I prefer th’ term macabre,” Ouma slurs, and Momota can feel him grinning against the skin of his neck.

It takes them another twenty minutes to make it back to Momota’s shack of a house. By that time, Ouma is completely out cold, or at the very least faking it eerily well. Momota—careful of the other boy’s injured head—gently lays Ouma down on an open patch of tatami, flings open the _shoji_ screens to allow for more airflow, then stares at the old, ratty futon where it rests in the storage closet. He glances back at Ouma, then back to the futon.

With a bitten curse, he puts Ouma to rest on his own bed, then spends the next half-hour thwacking at the old, musty futon until his arms ache and his breathing is good and ragged again—until all the mites are well and dead, he hopes.

With that out of the way, he then takes a seat on the _engawa_ , a fresh cup of stinging ginger tea in hand, and cautiously watches the rise and fall of the trickster _yokai’s_ chest as he rests. Aquila settles beside him, equally as attentive in her watch.

The mid-summer cicadas scream at the night and crows flutter through the trees. Momota finishes his tea and feels something stir in the hollow of his chest. 

It’s not another cough, though. Actually, it’s more of a pleasant feeling this time. It feels something like satisfaction. He almost feels _useful_ or _productive,_ in this moment.

Momota’s lips tug up into a smile, and one that genuinely sticks, at the thought—at least up until the medicinal tea causes him to sputter and gag.

    


It’s a start. 

  


  


  


   


* * *

宗固

_souko_

  


  


Momota wakes up to a nasty crick in his neck and a musty smell overwhelming his senses. All things considered, though, he feels pretty okay. He pushes himself up from the nasty old futon and stretches out the kinks in his spine with a long yawn. At least he’s not itchy with mite bites, he reasons. As he meanders towards the direction of his room for a change of clothes, however, he curiously hears the crackle and pop of a fire coming from the other side of the house. His brow creases in a frown.

Right on cue, Aquila’s head pops in from the room in the direction of the sound. “I tried to stop him,” she says tartly as Momota strides past her. 

Sitting in a lazy sprawl with a small rice-bowl in one hand and a set of chopsticks in the other is Ouma. Before him is the clay _hibachi_ , already smoking with whatever oddities he’d set on top of it. The worn, old teapot Momota had used the night before lies on its side across the room, thankfully already dry. In its place hangs a similarly worn iron pot that bubbles thickly over the low fire.

“Good morning, sleepy-head!” Ouma croons around a full mouth of food. 

Momota glances down at the chipped bowl in his hand, filled to the brim with some sort of porridge. He spots rice, a few pickles, and what looks like chunks of dried fish. His lip curls. “You could have _asked_ before raiding my things.“

“But then I couldn’t have surprised you with this bountiful feast.” Ouma waves his hand over the meager pot of pottage like he’s the damned Emperor himself. “You know, as thanks for leading me off on my way to hell.”

“You’re not dead and this isn’t hell.”

“Sure could have fooled me,” Ouma says as he chews.

Momota rolls his eyes as he lowers himself down across from the boy. He grabs an empty bowl lying to the side and ladles himself a portion. “Listen, I already know this place is a shithole. You’ve made your thoughts on that pretty damn clear every time we’ve met.”

“Well, that’s certainly still true,” Ouma says as he pops a piece of fish into his mouth, “but I meant that I was so sure the next time I’d see you you would have passed on somewhere beyond this mortal coil of ours. You seemed so eager to get a head start, after all.”

“Stop making it sound like I’m trying to off myself,” Momota snipes, shoveling a mouthful of pottage into his mouth. It’s… surprisingly edible. Good, even. That only makes him feel more sour.

“I wouldn’t call it trying to ‘off yourself,’ per se,” Ouma replies, bringing the butt of his chopsticks up to tap at his chin. “Willful neglect, maybe? Stubborn self-destruction? Death by way of idiocy? No, those don’t sound right.”

“The hell do you know?” Momota growls, feeling his hackles start to rise. 

“I know that you _really_ should have used better vinegar and more salt on these pickles. They’re pretty weak. The crunch is good though.”

Momota had been prepared to go off again, but the sudden non sequitur causes him to fumble. He feels his rhythm falter. In the off beat, though, he decides to let the argument drop. 

Instead he takes a good look at Ouma as the boy chomps down on a tough bit of pickled _daikon_. Actually, now that Momota gets a good look at the guy, he can see that his bangs are no longer completely matted together with blood (only small flakes remain), and at some point he’d wrapped a tattered bit of cloth around his head as a bandage. It looks vaguely familiar, like a sleeve off of one of Momota’s old _yukata_ , but he figures he doesn’t really want to know the answer.

Instead, he swallows down a bite of the rice porridge and asks, “So, you feel like telling me why I found you half-dead in the middle of the woods last night?”

“You still haven’t proven to me that I’m not _fully_ dead,” Ouma says, wagging his chopsticks in Momota’s direction. 

Momota rolls his eyes. “Alright, guess not. Another question then.”

Ouma’s eyes flash as he leans in, smile half-cocked. “Ask away.”

Momota leans forward as well, almost challengingly, hands braced on either of his knees. Ouma doesn’t flinch away as Momota’s eyes study him—the curve of his smile, the cheeky glint in his eye, the messy sweep of his hair, the boney jut of his shoulders. Not to mention the blood-stained rag across his forehead and the tired bags under his eyes. Everything about him, every little detail, seems so…

_Human_. But he can’t be, because humans have dæmons and this strange, dice-dealing oddity doesn’t. But _why_? _Gods_ , does he itch with the desire to know.

And this is the perfect chance to ask.

…but.

Momota bites back his question and sits back, a smile tugging at his mouth. “Nah,” he says, bringing the bowl back up to his mouth. 

At that, Ouma’s grin falls a little. He blinks and asks, “No? No what?”

“I don’t want to ask my question anymore,” Momota says as he finishes scooping another large mouthful of rice porridge. 

Ouma also leans back, watching Momota carefully. “What did I tell you about that ‘playing hard to get’ schtick?” he prods as he starts to stir his own bowl. “You should use your words more, Momota-chan, even though I’m sure doing so is very hard for you.”

Momota swallows and says, “Oh come on, you’d just lie or deflect your way out of any question I have for you anyway. No point in that, y’know?”

Ouma considers his words for a moment, and then the grin is back. “Well, you’ve got me there. But are you really happy leaving it at that?”

Momota laughs and shakes his head. “Oh don’t get me wrong, I’ll be getting my answer one way or another.” Then he shovels the rest of the porridge into his mouth and, with a satisfied exhale, slides the bowl over to his pesky companion. “But you’re not gonna be leaving here for… hm, at least a few days and that gives me plenty of time to figure out what’s going on with you.”

Ouma cocks an eyebrow at him. “Oho, holding me prisoner now?”

“No, but that leg of yours definitely is.” He gestures down at Ouma’s leg—specifically his swollen right ankle where it pokes out of his loose pants and gingerly rests, crossed over his left leg. Ouma shuffles the fabric of his pant leg down as Momota watches.

“You should have seen him earlier,” Aquila chatters, looking very pleased with herself as she fluffs out her feathers. “He was crawling around like a toddler trying to snoop through your things.” 

“Huh, you don’t say.” Momota leans back on his hands and grins, “Well, the _daimyo_ ’s got patrols going through the village daily. Just sayin’, you won’t get very far from the _doushin_ in that state, especially up here on the mountain.”

Ouma tries to keep his grin pleasant, but Momota can see the strain at the tug of his mouth.

_Gotcha_. So the slippery bastard’s definitely got some kind of deal that he wants hidden from the patrolling samurai. Momota doesn’t even try to fight back his pleased grin as he hoists himself up to standing, offering one hand out to Ouma. “Come on, there’s a stream out back. Let’s get you out there to cool off that twisted ankle of yours. You can clean all these dishes there too, while you’re at it.”

Ouma’s smile drips acid as he takes the proffered hand. “Well, the faster this bum leg of mine heals up, the faster I can get out of this hellhole and return to the land of the living, I suppose!”

“That’s the spirit!” Momota laughs, as he hoists the boy up and starts helping him limp off towards the back of the house. 

He’ll puzzle out this strange boy eventually, he thinks. He’ll make _sure_ of it.

  


  


  


  


(And though the idea never actually occurs to him, the truth is that Ouma’s meal that day had been the most he’d managed to stomach down for breakfast in far, far too long.)

  


  


  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so traveling is over and other life stuff has finally settled into place, so I'm gonna try to churn this out before my workload gets really crazy. Thanks to everyone for bearing with me on my wild and weird update schedule! 
> 
> Sorry this is short! I wanted to make it longer, but the next sections work better posted all together and it was too long to post all in one go.


	6. vi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three days, three nights. Momota learns to ask the right questions.

 

負われ坂 —  前半

_owarezaka — i_

 

 

 

Momota figured he’d find the perfect the opportunity to pick Ouma’s brain over dishwashing, but when the boy whines and moans about the chore for the better part of half an hour without doing much cleaning at all, Momota abandons the thought and snatches the rice-sticky pot from him with a growl. With the dishes out of his hands, Ouma immediately quiets, seemingly pleased with just trailing his feet through the nippy waters of the mountain stream. 

As he picks away at one of the globules of porridge with his nail, Momota breaks the silence. “So, what happened to your head?”

From where he’s perched on the edge of a large boulder, Ouma lifts one foot from the water to casually inspect his ankle. “Seems my umbrella turned the big one-hundred years old yesterday and finally gained sentience. Guess I wasn’t the best owner to it.” 

At Momota’s shocked silence, Ouma looks up from his swollen ankle and fixes him with a flat look. “Really? _That’s_ the one you don’t question?”

Momota flushes. “Well,” he stammers, “it could have happened.”

“Have you had any run-ins with _kasa-obake_ before?”

Momota feels his muscles clench at the mere thought.

“Ahh… not one for spooks and spirits, huh?” Ouma says, leaning his elbows onto his knees as a needling grin spreads across his face.

Momota leans away, turning his glare down to the stubborn glob of rice again.“I just… don’t want to go messing with things that aren’t from this world.”

“Oh?” Ouma says. He nods off to the side. “Well then how about your friend there?”

Aquila’s head bobs up from the fish she’s speared with her talons at the mention. 

“Dæmons are different,” Momota counters as he turns back to face Ouma’s challenging grin.

“No,” Ouma replies, idly spinning patterns into the water as he watches Momota with a knowing look. “I think what you mean is dæmons are _familiar.”_

Momota considers that for a moment. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You don’t have to go scratching that head of yours over what dæmons are and where they come from, since they’re with you from the start. You just take them for what they are as they are, no questions asked. Right?”

Momota tries to focus on the dirty pot again, but his eyes wander to follow the pale line of Ouma’s foot as it slides across the smooth rocks of the creek-bed instead. The ripples of the water turn the shape of it into a wispy mirage among the silt. Ghost-like. He shakes his head and continues with, “Why wouldn’t I? Aquila’s a part of me.”

Ouma’s foot stops making idle trails through the water. “Well that begs a different question.”

Momota narrows his gaze into the bottom of the pot. “And what’s that?”

“How well do you know yourself?” 

He looks back up to find Ouma’s gaze boring into him expectantly. 

“Damn well,” he replies through grit teeth.

Ouma shrugs cooly. “Could have fooled me.”

“Yeah, well, what do you know?” He jabs his nail under the caked-on rice and cringes as it prods into the soft skin underneath.

“ _Oh_ so many things!” Ouma’s foot resurfaces, splashing water across Momota’s face and making him sputter. “Like how sea-eagles aren’t indigenous to Japan, at least not to my knowledge. Why do you think your dæmon took that shape?”

Momota glances over at Aquila, still snacking on her catch. “I don’t know. Something about ancestral spirits. At least that’s what the shrine people are always saying.”

“Sure, sure. But more importantly, _how_ did she take that form?” Ouma leans forward again, as if to whisper a secret to Momota even though his voice stays at the same even pitch. “Isn’t it weird that dæmons can settle into forms we’ve never even seen? Forms we’d never even have the _chance_ to see, stuck on this island? How do you suppose that happens?”

Aquila tips her head back to swallow down her meal, and Momota swallows along with her, suddenly unsettled. “I… don’t know?”

Ouma practically radiates smugness when he says, “Not so familiar now, are they?”

Momota opens his mouth to retort, but can’t think of anything. 

But also, there’s his opening. 

“What about yours?” Momota counters, turning back to him with narrowed eyes. “Your dæmon. What shape did yours take?”

Ouma tucks his smile into his palm. “Hmm, what indeed?”

And that’s all he’ll say on the matter.

 

 

The first day proves to be a fruitless effort on Momota’s part. 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The second day is met with a curtain of rain, dripping through his ramshackle ceiling and through the forest around them. The drops pitter-patter across the tall stalks of bamboo, the woody, hollow sound filling in the spaces where both birds and bugs have fallen silent. It would be peaceful, if not for Ouma trying his damnedest to keep it from being so.

It’s been a constant stream of needling and mockery since Momota had woken up to find the boy perched in the open doorway at first light, the arch of his brow contemplative until he’d heard Momota’s arrival. At that, he’d perked up to complain about the threadbare blanket he’d been given, and then he’d complained about lack of variety in Momota’s food stocks after breakfast had been porridge once more. Now, he continues to complain even as Momota helps him elevate his swollen ankle into something comfortable as he sprawls across the wooden floor of the _engawa_. 

“Even if you’d wanted to, I know you couldn’t have spent all that money in a month,” he prods as Momota bunches up another old blanket to tuck under his foot. “So the least you can do is go buy some decent quality fish for us to split instead of that dried-out dreck.”

Momota snorts. “We’re too far inland for decent quality fish to be decently priced. Take what you can get.”

Ouma waves a flippant hand in his face. “Oh, please. Get that inn-keep friend of yours to find you a half-decent supplier. His uncle certainly has his nose in enough people’s business to find _something_ this side of edible.”

Momota shocks back to attention, planting both hands down on either side of Ouma’s leg and leaning in sharply. “Wait, how the hell do you know Shuuichi?” he asks, squinting and half-way to snarling.

“Oh, is that the guy’s name?” Ouma asks, nonchalantly examining his fingernails. “I was never able to get an answer out of him, what with how he’s always scurrying off at the beck and call of his uncle. And everyone in town knows how nosy that old bat is. It’s incredible that his little apprentice doesn’t have the same fire in him.”

Momota frowns at that, letting himself slowly sink back onto his haunches but keeping his eyes narrowed. “Apprentice? Like at the inn?”

Ouma considers him over the arch of his nail. “Oh, you don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“That Saihara Gosho’s main business was never the inn.” He snorts. “Try to keep up, Momota-chan, you’d think you’d never seen the world outside this little hut of yours at this rate.”

Momota scrunches up his nose and shakes his head. “No, they’ve had the inn forever. Shuuichi told me, it’s been the family business for decades.”

With a roll of his eyes, Ouma adjusts himself so he can bring his uninjured leg up under his chin. “The family business, sure. But not Gosho’s. Use that brain of yours and think for once: what kind of innkeeper gets called out on random trips to Dejima? Or get all cozy with the _doushin_ at the first sign of trouble?”

Slowly, the furrow in Momota’s brow recedes in favor of a more surprised upward arch. “The tonic,” he mutters under his breath. “And the herbs… a-and tea…”

“Exactly. With his brother and sister-in-law gone, the elder Saihara was just itching to get someone else to take his place at the front of the house so he could go gallivanting off on his little detective business.” Ouma shrugs and leans back on his elbows. “Guess your friend proved his own talents a little too well for that, though.”

As Ouma barks out a sharp laugh, Momota shifts so his knees are up to his chest and he can lay his own chin across his folded arms. He watches Ouma narrowly, but still asks, “If that’s all true, how would you even know all of that?”

Ouma blinks, raising a hand to flatten against his breastbone. “Are you saying you doubt little ol’ me?”

“Give me a reason to trust you for once and I will.”

“Oh, that’s no fun.” Ouma sighs, then turns out to look at the falling rain. There’s something lurking under the surface of his words when he says, “But what can I say? I guess Gosho and I have something in common.” A wry smile pulls up the corner of his mouth. “We both like sticking our noses where they don’t belong. He just does it in a more savory way, I suppose.”

Momota frowns, sinking onto his crossed arms. For someone who rambles on and on, seemingly without filter, it’s not exactly easy to get a straight answer out of Ouma. The guy dresses up his language with casual speech and flirty witticisms, but there’s something deeper hiding underneath his words every time. A cryptic element buried in every lilting remark of his that, beyond Momota’s frustration and irritation, only draws his curiosity out further in the most confusing way. 

Maybe it’s because Momota knows so little about him, or maybe it’s just because Ouma seems to know so much about everyone and everything else, that Momota wants to know more.Somehow, out here on the outskirts of the village and a good ways away from the town beyond it, Momota had almost forgotten how strangely involved Ouma had seemed in the first place. Without the buzzing of the nightlife around him, it’s easy to forget how deep his roots may go, and how knowledgeable he may actually be of the goings-on around him. 

But then, maybe that’s just something that comes with being a _yokai_. A long time ago, his grandmother had told him it can take hundreds of years for things of this world to gain spiritual sentience. That’s a long time to have to pick at every seam of this tiny, tucked-away town. 

How many secrets Ouma has hidden away in that head of his is anyone’s guess. How many enemies he’s made _because_ of those secrets, though? That’s not so hard. 

And on that note…

Hesitantly, Momota asks, “Is that why you’re on the run from the patrols?”

Ouma blinks over at him, then a grin splits his face. “Oho, look at you, finally making the right connections and asking the right kinds of questions!”

Feeling his mouth pridefully twitch up at the corners, Momota asks, “So is that a yes?”

But then Ouma lets out a long, exaggerated sigh, and he feels his expression drop once more. “And there you go, disappointing me again. It’s always one step forward, two steps back with you, isn’t it?”

Momota feels his cheeks start to burn as he defensively snaps, “It’s a simple question, yes or no?”

“But I don’t _like_ simple questions,” Ouma whines. “Don’t bore me now, Momota-chan. Otherwise I’ll have to turn to the rain for conversation.”

The weather suddenly turns to a downpour, as if responding to Ouma’s words. Momota flinches back from it instinctively. More _tanuki_ magic at play? Even if so, he sure as hell doesn’t want to find out.

And again, as if in response to that thought, water spatters against his cheek, causing Aquila to squawk and him to jerk back to attention, the blood draining from his face.

“Tell you what,” Ouma says, one hand cupped under a steady stream of water dripping down from the awning. Momota scowls at it as he wipes away the roof-water from his face. “Why don’t you tell me what _you_ think and we’ll go from there.”  
  
“What I think?”

Ouma tips his hand over so the water dribbles out of his palm, and he wipes it none-too-politely on his borrowed clothes, schnibbles of hay from the roofing sticking to the fabric. “About my deal. Take a page out of Saihara-chan’s book and let’s hear what sort of stories you can spin about me.”

There’s a challenge in the way he lazily smirks at Momota—as though he’s humoring him, doubtful that he’ll get it right. If he’s going to dangle the bait in front of him so blatantly, Momota’s only too glad to take it.

“Well,” he starts, scrubbing a hand over his stubbly chin, “you showed up right after the patrols started, and got fidgety when I mentioned them earlier, so they’re probably the ones that did all…,” he gestures awkwardly to the purpling bruise barely showing through Ouma’s bangs, “ _that_ to you.”

“Oh, nice deduction.”

Momota can’t tell if that’s sarcasm or not, so he continues on anyway. “And the only reason they’re patrolling here at all is because of something going on in town. Some sort of riot or whatnot.”

Ouma’s eyebrows twitch upwards at that, as if he hadn’t expected Momota to respond in that way. “Getting warmer,” is all he says.

“So that’s got to be how you come in,” Momota continues, now snowballing through his ideas. “The _daimyo_ was getting antsy because of the riots, so you’ve gotta be involved somehow!”

“Ah, ah, ah!” Ouma cuts in, holding up a hand to cut him off. “Now you’re jumping to baseless conclusions, Momota-chan! Who says I don’t just have some _separate_ reason to not like those nasty samurai?”

Momota falters. “Well, that’s…” 

“When we met you in the woods,” Aquila fills in. “You were in that tree overlooking the estate.”

Ouma waggles his eyebrows. “ _Ooh_ , the plot thickens.”

Aquila hops forward across the wooden floor, her head dipping this way and that to punctuate every line of her interrogation. “The branches dip into the far corner of the hunting grounds, low enough to climb. Is that why we found you out there? Were you doing something in estate? Were you… escaping the castle?”

“Oh, I like her,” Ouma says, pointing a finger into Aquila’s insistent gaze and turning to Momota with a bright grin. “Did she hog all the brains between you two?”

Momota ignores the jab, far too busy puzzling over the facts that he now has to sort through. “You were spying on the _daimyo_ ,” he says, leaning in conspiratorially. “All those scraps of parchment you had, like the one you gave me before. Were you sending messages to someone?” Momota thinks about the brief flutter of wings he’d heard after his coughing fit that day, too close to have been his far-away dæmon’s.

Ouma leans in to match him. “But who would I be sending messages to?” 

Momota’s face twists in on itself in a frown, and his tongue darts out to lick his lips. Ouma’s eyes flit down to watch them for a moment, but then they’re right back up and boring back into his own. The inky-darkness of them is haunting. Momota is reminded of the way he’d looked, bent over the dice cup with lamplight dancing off his bare skin. In fact, he’d sent Momota the same kind of look then in that smoke-hazy room.

The answer comes to him with sudden clarity. “Those guys at the gambling hall,” he notes, gesturing to the simple _obi_ tied around his waist as he remembers the one thing they’d all shared in common. “But just the ones with the handkerchiefs, right?”

Ouma’s smile widens, teeth poking dangerously out from between his lips as he asks, “But _what_ would a ragtag group of simple dice dealers and card sharks have against the _daimyo_?”

Before Momota can answer, thunder booms through the sky, shaking the ground and causing the bamboo to rustle in agitation through the grove. In the room behind them, something clatters to the floor—no doubt the cooking pot falling off its hook and down to the ground. Momota hisses out a curse, scrambling back to his feet to get to it before the leftover porridge spills out and seeps into the already-ratty tatami. Aquila flutters off ahead of him, but as Momota struggles to get his feet under him and through the door, he catches one last glimpse of Ouma. 

Completely unfazed by the cacophony around him, the boy smiles as placidly as ever as he tips one hand back into the downpour and gazes out at something beyond the trees. 

_Fucking_ _tanuki_ , Momota thinks, as he tamps down his frustration and disappointment and hurries off to clean.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Momota is so caught up in his thoughts on the third day that he almost forgets something very important. 

“Oh shit,” he says around a chewy mouthful of dried squid. Ouma winces away from the resulting, fishy spittle from where he’s once again perched ankle-deep in the stream next to him.

“Places to be?” he asks blithely, flicking pieces of half-chewed squid from his lap with an upturned lip. 

Already half-way through gathering up the stack of dishes he'd managed to clean, Momota absently mutters, “Yeah, sorry, I gotta get going.”

As he tries to balance several rice bowls of several different shapes in his arms, Ouma quirks one eyebrow up at him. “Off to go see that friend of yours?”

“Nah,” Momota says, distracted by the careful balance of dishes. “Nah not her. You just… you’ll be fine here, right?”

“All by my lonesome?” Ouma asks. Then with a pointed sniffle, “Who knows what beasts could come get me out here, though! Your reckless rejection truly stings, Momota-chan!”

Momota rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, sure. I’ll be back in a bit.” 

Ouma cackles at him but makes no sign of moving from his perch as Momota waddles back to the house, the stack of dishes precariously held in place under his chin. A few minutes after that, with everything back in its rightful place, he makes his way down the sloping path with Aquila gliding above him. 

An hour more after that, when they both return to the riverbank to check, they’re greeted by Ouma’s laughter, echoing through the grove on the back of a wave of screeching crows. 

“The hell are you doing?” Momota asks as he pushes aside a low-hanging branch and into the opening in the grove. 

Ouma turns his head over his shoulder and smirks at him, “Catching up on the latest gossip with the rest of the animals out here. You wouldn’t _believe_ all the scandalous things they have to say about you. It’s almost enough to make even _me_ blush.” 

Momota grimaces at that, eyes darting up to look for any other _yokai_ hiding in the trees. There’s nothing that he can see of note, though. What he does see is Ouma’s hand dip into the fold of the _obi_ at his waist. Just as he’s about to question him about it, Ouma cuts him off, asking, “What’s that?”

When Momota looks back up away from his creeping hand, he finds Ouma’s inquisitive gaze trained on the tied-up bundle held in the crook of his own arm. 

Momota turns back from the bundle to Ouma with a sly grin. “Curious?”

“Not if you’re going to be coy about it,” Ouma replies with a haughty sniff, turning back to the stream. “I’d rather talk with all my forest friends. They’re far more agreeable than you, apparently.”

Again, Momota’s not really sure how seriously he should take the boy’s words, but he figures it’s easier to just let it slide than to go digging for answers he doesn’t actually want to know. And besides, he’s just glad Ouma hadn’t run off while he wasn’t there supervising his recovery. The swelling in his ankle had gone down significantly over the course of the last few days, but still, any stress to it now would only make it worse in the long run. 

With one last snort at Ouma’s upturned nose, Momota bends down next to him to scoop up the last of the (now curiously clean) dishes and heads to the house to get started on preparations. 

 

 

 

By the time the sky is bathed in orange-purple hues, Momota is buzzing with excitement as he messily scrawls across the parchment in front of him.

“So,” Ouma suddenly calls from where he’s been leaning up against the doorframe watching Momota scribble the last of his notes into the corner of the unfurled scroll of paper. “When do I get to see that lovely drawing of yours? I’ve always admired _shunga._ ”

Momota flushes against his will. “Fuck off,” he snaps as he wills his face to stop burning, “that’s not what this is.”

“Aw really?” Ouma whines, clucking his tongue in disappointment. “Then what was I wasting my time posing over here for if not for your masterful artistry to capture?”

Momota pauses to consider him out of the corner of his eye. “Wait, were you really?” he asks, ears still tingling hotly. 

Ouma sends him a flat look as he takes a long pull from his chipped tea cup. “Gods, you choose the weirdest times to be as dense as a brick.” 

Momota glares at him, then uses a few upturned rice bowls beside him to smooth out the corners of the page, sitting back to take it all in. “If you want to see so badly,” he grumbles, gesturing Ouma over to his side, “then get over here before I change my mind.”

With a lazy shrug, Ouma sets his cup aside and scoots across the tatami towards him. As he settles in at Momota’s side, Momota half expects him to lead with another snide, teasing comment, but Ouma is uncharacteristically silent. When he glances over at him, Ouma’s gaze is trained intently on the arcs of his graphing. 

“It’s _Risshuu_ tonight,” Momota eventually supplies to fill the silence, reaching out to trace one of his messy lines of ink where it arcs through the even messier dotting of constellations. “That means it’s supposed to be the start of Fall, according to the lunar calendar. Weird, right? Since it’s still so damn hot.”

Ouma is silent in the wake of Momota’s prompting. Momota waits for an uncomfortable beat of time before opening his mouth again, but just then the boy cuts him off. “Who’d you steal this off of?”

Momota sputters, spine going stiff as he puffs up. “No one, you ass! This is _mine_.” Then, after a beat, “Well, at least some of it is, anyway,” he mutters, letting the harsh line of his shoulders sink back down.

“And the other part?” Ouma asks, still not looking at him. 

Ah. It takes a moment for Momota to find the words. “My grandpa’s. Before he… y’know.” He shakes his head as though to shake the sudden dourness of the mood. “I keep all his stuff at the pawnbroker’s now. It’s all I have left, so I gotta keep it safe, even if taxes are out the roof these days.”

Once again, Ouma is silent. Momota swallows anxiously as the boy continues to stare down at the page. That gives Momota pause. Had he said too much? Gone too far? Maybe it had been weird to sour the moment with such a dour conversation piece.

But then again, why does he even care? Does Ouma’s opinion really matter in the end? What does he care about the guy’s approval anyway?

Movement catches his eye, and he watches—stomach twisting—as Ouma reaches out to alight his finger at a spot at the center of the map, right at the edge of the _Heavenly Market_ enclosure. Something about that seems significant, in a way. 

Ouma’s shoulder is warm against his own as he leans in. Momota feels his heart jump up to his throat as the boy opens his mouth to speak.

“You got the _kanji_ here wrong,” is what he says.

In an instant, the tension washes out of him and is replaced with a vacuous sense of… something he doesn’t quite have the words for, but something decidedly unpleasant. “Seriously?” he asks with a grimace against that weird, foreign sensation.

Ouma nods his head and snatches the fraying brush from his hand. “There should be an extra stroke right here”—he drags the tip in a sharp, clean line through the character—“and you forgot to add another small stroke at the end”—he finishes with a quick, short flick of the brush to the bottom of what had been written.

Momota snatches the brush back from him with a scowl. “No, I mean are you _seriously_ nitpicking this right now?”

Ouma turns to him with wide-blown eyes. “I don’t know, Momota-chan. Are you _seriously_ that behind in your character-studies?”

“Fuck off,” he grouses in return, rolling the parchment up again and stomping off to the back of the house. “See if I help give you a boost up now.”

He’s met by silence for all of a few seconds before he hears Ouma call out from behind him, “A boost up? A boost up where? Momota-chan? Momota-chan!”

 

Momota smirks, self-satisfied, as the last winking glow of the sun dips below the horizon.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops, wasn't gonna post this until the morning but I accidentally hit post chapter when trying to go for preview so it's here now ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Had to split this chapter in two because it was getting far too long! We're starting to get to the heart of things now, slowly but surely.


	7. vii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beneath a sea of stars, a mystery reveals itself.

負われ坂 —  後半

_owarezaka — part ii_

 

 

 

 

In the end, though, he does still give Ouma the offered boost. 

It takes a bit of effort, but on the third try Ouma finally manages to cinch his hands into the straw thatching of the roof and pull himself up onto its sloped ledge.

“Ugh,” Momota hears him whine, muffled by the hay. “It’s still all gross and musty from the rain. I can’t believe you don’t have tiling up here. Welcome to the 18th century, try to keep up.”

“Well that’s summer for you—too muggy for anything to dry up quickly,” Momota calls up after him, moving towards his usual vantage point at the support beam. Aquila flutters by him to find her perch at the apex of the roof as he gets his foot settled into a familiar notch in the wood. He tightens the sash on the satchel slung across his chest and begins to hoist himself up. “And you’re lucky there were no tiles up there, otherwise you’d have been shit out of luck pulling yourself up.”

“Very presumptuous of you to think that I even _want_ to be up here.”

Momota snorts as he clears the ledge and starts up the damp roofing. Ouma is seated along the ridge of the roof and waiting alongside Aquila, whose feathers are puffed up to a hilarious degree as she side-eyes the boy. Momota tucks his laugh into his fist and replies, “I thought you said you don’t like people ‘playing hard to get’ or whatever, you hypocrite.”

Ouma affects a gasp as Momota settles down between the two of them. “Momota-chan! What a big word from you!”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t push your luck, asshole. It’s a long way down.” He lets out a few dry coughs as he swings the bag into his lap, un-cinching the drawstring at the top and beginning to pull out its contents. “Here.”

With that he shoves a few rolls of parchment over to Ouma, who beams as he holds out his arms and chirps, “Sir, yes sir!”

After the parchment are a few bits of whittled down charcoal, a long flat piece of dry-wood to write on, and finally the main attraction. With careful hands, Momota pulls the familiar shape out from its casing, handing the protective cloth to a diligently-waiting Aquila at his side. 

The lacquered wood of the telescope glows almost red in the gentle moonlight as he slips the caps offeach end and extends the eyepiece outwards. “It’s a good thing the pawnshop owner has no idea what this is, or else he’d probably have sold it ages ago,” he murmurs, unable to keep the fond reverence out of his voice as he smooths a hand over the spiraled etchings in the wood. “I told him it’s just an old scroll-case. Guess he hasn’t checked. Maybe I should pay him more for that,” he finishes with a soft chuckle. 

When he turns his easy grin towards Ouma, he finds the boy watching him with an unreadable expression. The parchment, pencils, and wooden easel are diligently held in his grip, but there’s a softness in his body language, even if the slant of his mouth is still reserved. “What’s a hick like you doing with something like that?” he asks, voice pitched curiously low. 

Momota’s grip tightens protectively across the wood, drawing it close to his chest. “I did’t steal it if that’s what you’re implying. I’m no crook.”

“Of course, not a crook _like me._ Is that the implication?” Ouma snorts. He turns out to look over the small grove below them. “Fine, keep your little family secrets. You’re a terrible liar, Momota-chan, so I suppose I’ll know for a fact if you’re deceiving me once you show me how it works.”

The problem, Momota thinks, is that the more Ouma dances away from learning more about Momota’s life, the more Momota paradoxically wants to tell him more about it. The thought makes his nose scrunch up and stomach squirm in an unpleasant way, so he turns back to the telescope. 

As he starts aligning the eye pieces into correct focus, he eventually forces the words out. “My grandpa was from Kyoto. Had real cushy status in the city and went through all the fancy schooling when he was growing up. That’s what got him into the whole star-charting thing.” 

He lets out a rough sigh, hands stilling on the dials. “But then his old man did something to disgrace the family—I don’t know what exactly, but it ended up with a knife through his gut and the family running off to the sticks.” Still, he grins as he says, “My gramps—the sly bastard—took this with him before he left. Never gave up the hobby, then passed it down to me.”

Ouma hums contemplatively, chin perched in his hand. “I don’t know. Sounds like a crook to me.”

Momota laughs as he lines the telescope up to his eye and checks the focus. “Doesn’t count as stealing if it was given to you to use in the first place, I figure.”

Ouma rolls his eyes, and it’s subtle, but when he speaks, Momota thinks he can hear a smile fighting through in his tone. “Alright, big guy. If that’s true then show me. How exactly does this phony-looking future-contraption of yours work?”

Momota lowers the telescope, offering it over to him with a cocked brow and a bright smile. “See for yourself.”

Ouma warily considers the telescope, then Momota, then the telescope again. Eyebrows sloping upwards and mouth set in a determined line, he places the extra items aside and gently moves to lift it from Momota’s hands. 

“Careful, it’s heavy,” Momota says as Ouma wraps both of his hands around it. “Hold it up to your eye and use the hand closest to you to adjust the dials of the eyepiece.”

“Yes, yes, thank you, Momota-chan, but I think I can take it from here,” Ouma says, sounding not thankful at all as he tinkers away at the dials himself. 

Momota snorts, pulling the dry-wood into his lap along with one of the charts. When he offers his hand out, Aquila diligently drops a piece of charcoal into it. “If you look straight up you should see the Milky Way. That’s that really bright line that cuts through the sky like a river.”

“I would have never guessed! Tell me more!”

“Alright, asshole,” Momota says, picking a spot on his own map and tracking it with his finger. “Then if you’re so smart, find _Orihime’s_ star.”

“Oh, how romantic. I thought we were done with all the pageantry of the summer festivals?”

Momota snorts. “Sounds like you’re stalling to me.” 

“Oh, heaven forbid!” 

Momota turns down to his chart as Ouma draws the telescope to his eye, sketching in observations and penciling in any missing spots of the map. After a minute or so of searching the skyline, Ouma eventually lowers the telescope to his lap. “I’m going to guess it’s the big, bright one right… there,” he says, pointing a finger straight up into the sky above them.

Momota leans into his space to follow the line of his finger. “Nice try,” he says, then maneuvers his arm down just slightly to the left. “There. That even brighter one is _Orihime_.”

Ouma turns to grin at him, his teeth glinting as bright as starlight from this close up. “Very good, Momota-chan! You passed my test.”

“Oh, bullshit.” He shoves at the boy’s shoulder only enough to rock him slightly on his perch. “There’s no way you knew wh—.”

“Another test!” Ouma demands, fingers dancing excitedly along the carved wood in his hands. 

Momota sighs, leaning back on his arms. “Fine. Find the tail of the Swan next.”

“Is it another bright one?”

“You’ve got another thing coming if you think I’m giving you any hints.”

“That was another test,” Ouma says. His tongue peeks out from between his lips as he hefts the eyepiece to his face again and tries to focus up at the sky. “I’m going to say this one, then,” he declares after a bit of deliberation, pointing to another star further south. 

Momota sits up again, following the line of his finger. “Huh, I think you actually got it.”

“Don’t sound too surprised. I might get offended, taking compliments from idiots like—”

“Last test,” Momota interjects. “Let’s finish that _Tanabata_ theme and go for the _Dog Keeper_ star.”

There’s a curious glint in Ouma’s eye when he tilts it Momota’s way. “Any hints for a plebeian like me?”

“Yeah, look for…,” he considers the map in his lap, scouring over markings both new and old, familiar and not. And speaking of not, a smudge catches his attention, right where he knows the _Dog Keeper’s_ constellation should be, stopping him in his tracks. 

His chest stutters. He lets his finger trace along the fresh ink marks, just at the edge of the _Heavenly Market_ enclosure, expression falling into something contemplative and just a bit uneasy. 

That damn _tanuki_ magic, at work again, no doubt.

Working around a suddenly tight throat with eyes fixed intently on the corrected _kanji_ from earlier, he says, “…Look for _Aq_ —ah, look for the _Eagle_ constellation.”

If Ouma hears the waver in his voice, he doesn’t show any sign of it, head already turned up towards the stars and pale neck extended gracefully as he lifts the telescope to the arc of the Milky Way. 

There’s something beautiful in the way that the moonlight highlights the scene, catching on the lacquer of the telescope while also melting into the dark waves of Ouma’s hair and the borrowed _haori_ coat across his shoulders. Momota finds his eyes can’t seem to decide which image to hold onto—the impossible night sky, or the the impossible _yokai_ masquerading as boy beside him.

Suddenly, Momota is struck by the thought of how weird these last few days—no, the entire last month or so—have been. A full cycle of the moon ago, all he’d known of the boy had been the unsettling line of his teeth as they had cut out from under the lip of a ratty, red umbrella. Now, with how much the thought of him has been rattling about his brain all this time, it feels as though he could categorize almost as many of Ouma’s strange, puzzling mannerisms—false, less false, and everything in between—as he could the vast smattering of stars in the sky.

He leans back on one arm, the other resting in his lap over the forgotten star-chart, and takes a good look at Ouma. The narrow laugh-lines etched into the corners of his eyes. The bow of his mouth, unusually relaxed. The faint freckles dotted across the lines of his cheekbones, like constellations against the dark circles they sit atop.

So human in his appearance, but something otherworldly in every incongruous peculiarity—every inch of him discordant. An unsettling paradox that Momota just can’t get off his mind no matter how hard he’s tried.

That should terrify him, and in a way Ouma _does_ terrify him, but not like the thought of any other spirit ever has. Because this terror is a familiar one, he realizes with sudden clarity.

Because, he’s always loved the mystery of the stars—the endless expanse of the night sky so vast it could swallow him up. That too is otherworldly in a way that should frighten him. But there’s always been the notion that if he took the time to and looked hard enough, that maybe, just maybe, he could find something to understand in those empty pockets of sky, and that was always the more powerful force. He’d felt that yearning at the ripe age of seven, when his grandfather had first wrapped his small hands around the rich red wood of the telescope. He’d felt it in the man’s absence every time he’d looked up at the stars. He feels it now.

Maybe this strange puzzle of a boy has something of the same sort of magnetic pull. 

And, gods, just how long has it been since he’d felt that terrible longing drive to _know_ something?

_(Something stirs up in Momota’s lungs, but for once it’s too far buried under this newfound, rapidly expanding sensation in the hollow of his chest to make itself known.)_

Ouma draws the telescope away from his eye, lowering it carefully and gazing up into the abyss with a determined narrowness to his lids. Then his lip quirks up and he points a finger out once more. “That one,” he says, turning one of those artful, not-yet-knowable smiles on Momota.

Momota follows the line of his finger to keep himself from getting pulled into the gravity of those dark eyes. His chest feels tight, almost too full, so he rubs his left hand idly over the sensation as he dips his head down to match Ouma’s trajectory and take in the stars. “No, you’re too far west,” he murmurs, circling his fingers around Ouma’s narrow wrist and angling it downwards and further to the right. He carefully lines the tip of the boy’s finger up with the bright, glittering eye of the _Eagle_. “There.”

When he tips his gaze over to check if Ouma is following his direction, it becomes all too apparent how close they are. Leaning in had brought their shoulders flush against each other, and angled the way he is, Ouma’s entire arm brushes against his chest, like an arrow held within the bowstring of Momota’s arms. He pulls his hand away, the charge of skin-on-skin suddenly too much, and anchors it on the telescope in Ouma’s lap instead. Momota feels soft, dark strands of hair brush his neck as Ouma turns to face him. 

_Close_.

The boy also blinks, as though just as confounded by the strange gravity of their orbit. When he breathes, Momota feels the air flutter across his jaw.

So unknown, but Momota wants to know him so badly—he _wants_.

“Are you…?” he starts, surprising even himself, but the words die at the back of his throat before he can get them out.

From this close, Ouma’s eyes are wide, somehow deeper and darker than the night sky itself. Somehow, just like that sky, he too is ephemeral and infinite in every unfathomable impossibility of his being. His shallow exhale brushes against Momota’s mouth in a way that sends comets racing down his spine. “Am I?” he prompts, voice pitched soft and low.

Momota swallows. It’s now or never.

“Are you really a _yokai_?” he asks on a rushed breath, one hand clenched tight around the telescope, the other hovering in the air at Ouma’s hip, and gaze insistent as he leans deep into the boy’s space.   

And Ouma… 

 

 

 

…blinks. 

He seems dumbstruck for all of a second—jaw going slack enough for his lips to fall open and his brow to dip down—before he lets out a loud, gut-punching guffaw and sputters right in Momota’s face. 

The force of the laugh has him rocking back with the momentum, and the arch of his spine is convex and careless as he tips back over the edge and into the empty air beyond the slope of the roof, like an asteroid tipping out of orbit. No time to think, Momota quickly scrambles over and reaches out his free hand again to grab Ouma by the fluttering lapel of his borrowed clothing before he can fall off the ledge and split his head open on the ground below. Distantly, he hears the wooden plank and charcoal pencils clatter off of the roofing, the sound of paper and eagle wings fluttering not far after them. They don’t matter nearly as much as the other two things—far more invaluable—held tight in either of his hands.

Ouma jerks as Momota pulls the collar of his oversized _haori_ taut. Dangled over the edge and suspended in the air by nothing but Momota’s vice-grip on the fabric, it looks almost as though he could be floating on the air itself. His eyes are dark as ink as they watch Momota with an unreadable depth. 

Then he grins as though his life isn’t completely held within Momota’s grasp right now and softly croons, “My hero,” the sound of it oddly familiar. 

Momota swallows against the tightness in his chest—a factor of so many things. His panic, his illness-stricken lungs, that strange vacuous sensation in his chest, still too foreign to name. Above it all, he says, breathless and confounded, “Well? Are you?”

Ouma’s lips tilt into something a bit more lazy and a tad more fond as he says, “No, you absolute moron. But I’d love to know how you reached that conclusion.”

The night stretches on around them, strangely quiet in spite of the summer haze. Momota gapes at Ouma incredulously, even as he carefully reels the boy back in. Ouma follows along limp as a rag-doll, his arms dangling behind him and smile relaxed as Momota settles him into a safer position at his side. As soon as he’s steady along the line of the roof, Momota’s hands come up to grip him by the shoulders and anchor him down and he wills his racing heart and stuttering lungs to calm down. Ouma isn’t cracked and broken on the ground below—rationally, he knows that—but still his chest pounds with a strange, too-full feeling seemingly unrelated to his ever-present illness. The hot, night air somehow feels chilled against his ruddy, flushed skin.

“You’re…,” he starts, tongue tangling against his teeth as he struggles to figure out what to say, “really _not_ a _yokai_?”

Ouma snorts again, his shoulders jumping under Momota’s white-knuckled grip. “How many times am I going to have to say it to get it through that thick skull of yours, Momota-chan?”

“But!” Momota jumps in, grip tightening. “But the weather, and knowing the Eagle constellation, and the debts, a-and the…,” he stalls, brain running itself in circles. “The dæmon thing! You don’t have a dæmon!”

Ouma looks fit to bursting, his eyes almost fully crinkled at the corner and lips quivering like a dam on the brink of overflow. “Or maybe you just didn’t look hard enough.”

“To be fair,” a new voice says from somewhere in the inky-black depths of the sky above them, causing Momota to shudder and Aquila’s wings to spread out defensively, “It wasn’t for a lack of trying. I do tend to blend in.”

“Well don’t give him too much credit. I wouldn’t exactly call hiding in plain sight ‘blending in,’” Ouma says, reaching up one hand into the empty night, as though he could pluck a star right out of the sky.

It’s not a star that lands on his finger, but a sleek, black bird. The gloss of her feathers glints in the moonlight, as does the curious twinkle in her eye as she tilts her head curiously up at Momota. “Now, before you jump to any more farfetched conclusions, I’ll have you know I only have two legs. See for yourself—no three-legged _Yatagarasu_ here.”

“Look at you, spoiling all the fun,” Ouma chides as he lightly bops her on the beak. 

Before either of them can continue, Momota chokes out. “A… crow?” And it’s as though several little cogs slip into place, all to paint a picture of the past month that makes an upsettingly good deal more sense in retrospect. The wingbeats in an otherwise empty forest, cackling laughter by the stream, haunting bird-calls in the rain—a hot, shameful flush once again rushes to his face. “ _That’s_ what you were hiding?”

“I _just_ said she wasn’t hiding,” Ouma says, lowering the crow to his shoulder. 

“But she wasn’t coming out either!”

The crow clicks her beak like laughter, talons plucking at the fabric of Ouma’s _haori_ delightedly. “Maybe I just like the mystery of it all?”

“The theatrics?” Ouma supplies. 

“The drama!” she cries.

“I’m being serious,” Momota snaps.

“Maybe I am too,” Ouma counters, wagging a finger at Momota’s face. “You know those nasty samurai are after my skin, Momota-chan. Having my dæmon out and about would make me such an easy target and draw so much attention to me, wouldn’t it?”

“You draw more attention _without_ one.” Momota gently swats the finger away from him. 

Ouma’s grin widens. “Ah, look at that! You’re so right. After all, I certainly caught your attention, didn’t I?”

Momota pulls a face, but even that can’t keep even more heat from ruddying up his cheeks as Ouma simpers. “Then your argument is bullshit!” he sputters.

“Only if you suppose I didn’t _want_ the attention,” Ouma’s voice suddenly falls back down an octave, eyes narrowing into half-moons that cut like knives through the dark night. “Oh, but that would be ridiculous, wouldn't it?”

“Terribly so,” says the crow. 

Momota sucks in a breath to say something back, but it hangs there in his chest, suspended. He mulls the words over, and with it the tension in his shoulders sinks, replaced with something more reserved, more perplexed. Instead of barreling forward, he tries to take a step back. Ouma Kokichi has made a mystery of himself, shrouded in so many careful veils. Like the curtain of night, he wants to pull them back. It’s frustrating, and fascinating, so he says as much. “I really don’t get you,” he admits.

Ouma smiles that artful, wry smile of his and simply replies, “I don’t try to let myself get _got_.”

Momota watches him, lip jutting out thoughtfully, then replies, “I think I want to, though. Get you.”

Something hitches in Ouma’s expression, that same strange offsetting of his rhythm. His dæmon’s feathers ruffle, ever so slightly. 

Momota had thought, once, about how difficult it was to read Ouma without a dæmon around. How ironic it is that she’d show her face now, just as he’d started to parse out the language by himself. “So, what’s her name?” he asks. 

Ouma blinks at him, then attempts to set his rhythm again. “Why don’t you hazard a guess? We can narrow it down through process of elimination.”

He doesn’t get far, though, as the crow nips his ear, causing him to yelp and slap a hand over the smarting appendage. She clicks her beak, hopping up from his shoulder to his head. “Metis,” she supplies.

“No fun at all,” Ouma grouses, gently rubbing at his earlobe.

And it’s all so incongruous that Momota can’t hold back the startled laugh that bubbles out of him. Even Aquila at his back lets out an amused warble. “Well, nice to meet you then, Metis.”

She preens from the crown of Ouma’s head. “The pleasure’s all mine.”

“Yes, yes, salutations and all that,” Ouma cuts in, not even bothering to deal with his dæmon, “I think I liked it better when you thought I was a _yokai_.”

Momota shoots him a cheeky grin. “Are you that upset to lose the mystery?”

He shrugs, leaning back in an easy sprawl. “Don’t think you’ve gotten that much of an upper hand on me, Momota-chan. I’ve got plenty more secrets tucked away where that came from. I would never let myself be known by a buffoon like you.”

Momota shrugs, leaning back on his arms.“I’ll figure them out eventually."  
  
“Tenacious aren’t you?”

“I guess! It’s just…,” Momota trails off. Because there’s a thought rolling around in his head, but putting it into words is proving difficult. Pursing his lips, he gives it a try the best way he knows how. “How many stars do you think there are up there?”

Ouma cocks an eyebrow at that. “Well, that’s quite the non-sequitur.” When Momota doesn’t elaborate, he sighs and waves a hand in a beckoning flourish. “I don’t know, you tell me, space-case.”

Momota tips his head back up to gaze at the sky. Then, after a moment of quiet pause,“I don’t know either, honestly. I probably never will, what with how many of them are up there. But I still try when the nights are clear enough, scratching away at my gramps’ old charts to try to find any spots he missed.” He sends Ouma a look. “Cuz the fun is in finding them, y’know?”

The boy regards him curiously. “Are you sure that illness of yours hasn’t spread to your brain somehow, Momota-chan? You’re spouting an impressive amount of nonsense tonight.”

Somewhere behind him, Momota hears Aquila let out a strange warble. He feels something stutter inside him too at the words. That sensation in his chest… for the first time, something occurs to him. It’s different than the ache that’s been residing there for half a year now. The weight that had been bearing down on his chest doesn’t seem as bad as usual. He feels lighter, he realizes with odd clarity, in more ways than one. 

As Aquila gently nudges her head into his shoulder, the words fall from his mouth. “Y’know, honestly, this is my first time back up here in ages.”

“With all these sudden conversation changes, you’re really not helping your case here.”

Momota reaches out to shove his shoulder, but Ouma gracefully dodges with a cheeky grin. Momota also huffs out a soft laugh. “Yeah, yeah, it’s just I, ah…” His face scrunches up as he tries to think of how to phrase his next statement. “I don’t know why I haven’t. I just… something about you being here the past few days reminded me to come out tonight.”

“I’m so glad my near-death experience was so enlightening for you, Momota-chan.”

“That’s not what I—,” Momota lets out a grunt, scrubbing his hand through his hair. ”I just mean that I’m glad I had company for this. It’s… been a while.”

Then he lowers his chin down from the stars, catching Ouma’s eye. “It’s kind of dumb, but thanks for being here, I guess.”

Ouma’s expression goes oddly blank, but then he turns forward to rest his chin over his knees with a roll of his eyes. “Please, spare me the sap. Go and find the boy detective and little-miss-murder next time you feel the urge to drag someone up here.”

He’s not sure how Ouma knew—perhaps he doesn’t really want to know—but it’s true. Shuuichi used to join in, when he still lived nearby, and Maki indulged them with her presence from time to time. Night after night, just the three of them and their three dæmons, perched together in the tall camphor trees dotting the hunting grounds. Had it really been almost a year since family responsibilities dragged Shuuichi so far away from them? Almost a year since the _daimyo’s_ regulations grew more severe and Maki’s time grew more scarce? Had this heaviness—certainly a product of the illness but maybe not completely—really been living in the hollows of his chest for that long without a name?

Metis’ eyes watch Momota with a strange intensity, and maybe that’s what gets him talking. “Even if I could, they wouldn’t.” 

“Oh?” Ouma asks. “Wouldn’t they?”

From somewhere within this newfound clarity, a bitterness bubbles up from the pits of his stomach. “Not with how they’ve been treating me the past few months,” he mutters, trying to tamp it down.

“Which is?”

“Like I’m made of glass.” Momota hisses, surprising even himself. He quickly turns his head away, guiltily trying to shake away the sneer from his lips. “I know it’s not their fault—it’s _not_ —but they’re… they don’t want to admit that I’m…”

“Dying?” Ouma’s voice cuts clear through the night. There’s nothing flinching in his tone. 

Momota turns back to look at him. “…Yeah.” He admits for perhaps the first time, barely a whisper. 

Ouma meets him. Both boy and dæmon—two pairs of dark, night-water eyes set on him. “Are you, Momota-chan?”

When Momota doesn’t speak, he asks again, “ _Are_ you dying, Momota-chan?”

A mirthless laugh hiccups out of him. “Well, you said it yourself, right? The Consumption’s a nasty, rare thing to catch.”

“That’s not what I’m asking,” Ouma says, voice low. “Are you dying, or are you just so convinced that you are that you gave up trying because it was easier?”

Momota shakes his head because no, that’s not it. He _is_ dying and, really, it would just be so much easier if everyone would just accept that. So much easier if they’d let him do what he needed to do, let him take care of them before he deteriorates completely, like a comet burning through the night sky until there’s nothing left. If they’d just stop dancing around the issue, maybe then he could finally stop as well—just come clean and tell them why he’s grown so tired of every useless remedy or meaningless platitude they’ve brought him, why he’s saved every last _mon_ of his in that wooden box beneath his floorboards. Tell them how it’s the only way he’s felt useful in the face of his stagnated health and waning spirit, and how if he’s got nothing left, the least he can do is give them something more.

Because he _is_ dying.

Isn’t he?

But then Momota thinks about the weight in his chest, so much lighter than it’s been in months. He thinks about how he hasn’t felt the need to keep count of each cough that’s punched out of him like grains of sand through a steadily depleting hourglass, and how the sky called out to him for the first time in months because there was someone else to share it with. He thinks about rice-caked pots and chilled river water, light-tie lanterns and dice lost in pipe smoke. He thinks about how he’s been waking up with a desire to _do_ something, that familiar drive to discover something for himself for the first time in what feels like forever. 

In the end, even surrounded by his village and with both of his dearest friends still within arm's reach, he’d really been so very lonely, so very aimless, hadn’t he? 

And it’s faint, but something in Ouma’s expression seems to soften, almost like he could read the very thoughts on Momota’s mind. Almost like that _tanuki_ magic were still there. Head tipped against the soft line of his arms and haloed in moonlight, he says, “Didn’t I tell you you were a coward?”

Momota swallows, that light feeling in his chest growing steadily warmer as a heavy weight seems to slip from his shoulders like stars down the Milky Way. “Now who’s spouting non-sequiturs?”

Ouma huffs out a breath of a laugh, turning his eyes back up to the starlight. Metis chuckles as well, tipping off his head and finding an easy perch in his lap. He strokes a hand down the glossy line of her back. The silence is comfortable, so Momota, feeling oddly burdenless and light, places the telescope back into its case, slips the sash across his shoulder, and does the same.

He’s not sure if it’s minutes of hours that pass before he speaks again, this time a question. “Are you ever going to tell me why the _doushin_ are after your hide?”

He hears a rustle of fabric that he assumes is Ouma shrugging. “Oh, I certainly _could_ tell you.”

“But you won’t,” Momota says, turning to look at him.

He watches as the corner of Ouma’s eye crinkles and the corner of his lip tugs upwards. “Aren’t you the one who said the fun is in finding out?”

“That’s different,” he insists. Then he scooches closer and ducks his head down into Ouma’s line of sight. “Hey, what if I could help?”

Ouma blinks at him, then breathes an incredulous laugh through his nose. “Help?”

“If you told me what was happening,” he presses, “maybe I could do something too.”

The boy lifts a hand to his mouth in what’s now a familiar gesture. “Momota-chan! Are you turning to a life of crime?”

Momota snorts, “No, you can’t fool me at this point. I have a feeling about this.”

The hand falls to the side. “A feeling?”

“Yeah, and it’s telling me this isn’t some petty gambler’s crime. There’s something more to this.” 

This time it’s a sharp laugh, not a gasp, that bites out of Ouma. “So gullible! You’ve fallen right under my spell and you don’t even know it!”

Momota shakes his head. “Try all you like, but I’m trusting my gut about you.”

“A fool’s error, really."

“I go to the hunting grounds all the time,” Momota insists, “and I know someone who could help us from the inside. It’s got something to do with the _daimyo_ , right? I could ask around, get some information for you. The _doushin_ don’t have anything on me.” He looks at Ouma imploringly. “I could help if you just let me.”

Ouma’s expression tightens, closing off behind the hard cut of his brow. Any humor from before shutters away. “That’s cute, Momota-chan, but too many cooks spoil the broth, as they say.”

Momota’s gaze narrows. “So you won’t even let me try?”

“It’s not exactly the kind of thing that has a trial run,” he says dryly. Dismissively.

Something in Momota’s chest aches hollowly, the familiarity of it making his stomach churn. “You think I’m useless.”

“No, I think you’re _dumb_ ,” Ouma says, matching his gaze unflinchingly. “And the dumb ones are the ones who get caught, and when one person gets caught, it’s only a matter of time before every other pawn follows suit. So sorry, Momota-chan, but I don’t want that kind of liability on my hands.”

It’s quiet, but perched beside him, Metis nudges her beak against his hand and says, “Kokichi…”

And maybe that’s what cues Momota on to it—the tiny, hairline fracture in Ouma’s careful indifference, the tightness in his mouth and stiffness in his shoulders. 

Momota presses onwards as the knot in his stomach unfurls again, trusting his instincts. “I _could_ help you.”

“Could you?” Ouma counters. 

“You wouldn’t know unless you let me try.” Momota scoots even closer. When he plants his hand down to balance himself, it lands overlapped across Ouma’s own. He feels fingers twitch beneath his own as a flinch runs down the boy’s arm. The crack in the veneer spiderwebs outwards. To Ouma’s panicked, wide-eyed expression, Momota says, “Tell me.”

Ouma opens his mouth once, then closes it, lips thin. The tendons in his neck ripple as he swallows. His hand is warm under Momota’s own, and Momota is once again held suspended by that strange, vacuous gravity between them. 

Then something seems to solidify in Ouma’s expression. His thumb brushes against Momota’s knuckles as his body angles up towards him, ever so slightly. His gaze goes sky-deep again as he searches for something in Momota’s own—so close—something wanting in that gravity.

He nods. 

“Okay,” he says. Then his hand slides out from under Momota’s own and the spell is broken, gravity righting itself again and grounding them back in the moment. Ouma’s expression slips back behind the curtain, his easiest, telltale smile painting itself back across his features. “You win, Momota-chan.”

“I do?” Momota asks, remembering how to breathe again beyond the vacuous space of that moment.

“I’ll tell you,” Ouma continues, pulling the _haori_ tighter around himself and shaking the night from his shoulders. “But! It’s late and I’m tired.”

Momota frowns, watching as Ouma begins to eye the ground below them and shuffle down the slope of the roof. Metis glances over at Momota for a hesitating moment, then follows after him, hopping down the straw roofing. Momota calls after them both, “You didn’t say—”

“No,” Ouma calls back. Momota can only see the curve of his back as he inches to the ledge. “Not tonight. But if you pull out all the stops over breakfast, then maybe I can be persuaded to let you in on my little secret.”

Momota hesitates. “Really?”

Ouma arches that pale neck back at him, and with another crescent-moon smile, he asks, “What does your gut say?”

Before Momota can say anything, he slips beyond the awning, and Metis swoops off into the tree line. 

And with his exit, the curtain of night suddenly seems to descend fully on the scene. Aquila’s head tips back and forth, chasing the glean of Metis’ feathers where they’d disappeared into the night. 

Momota grips the sash of the telescope case, warmth still playing across his knuckles but fading like comet trails. 

Tomorrow. He’ll chase those answers tomorrow.  

 

 

 

 

 

打ち綿 —  前半

_uchiwata — part i_

  


 

 

The fourth day, as sun peeks in through the dancing stalks of bamboo, both Ouma and Metis are gone without a trace.

This time there’s no _koban_ waiting for Momota on the carefully folded futon. Just a single piece of parchment and a lingering sense of unease.

_Let’s meet again in Hell someday_ , is all the note says.  

Momota crumples it up in his fist and bites back his frustration and deep, aching disappointment. 

 

 

 

For the fourth day in a row, he doesn’t go to the hunting grounds. Instead, he sets off for town, pack slung resolutely over his shoulder and the Saihara Inn calling his name from the end of another thick, summer night.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ouma Kokichi, a known morosexual: A guy asked me if I was a yokai once and now I dream of kissing him under the moonlight
> 
> And yes it was a crow because I am wholly unoriginal.
> 
> Orihime = Vega (in the Constellation Lyra)  
> The Tail of the Swan = Deneb (in the Constellation Cygnus)  
> The Dog Keeper Star = translated from the traditional Japanese name for Altair (in the Constellation Aquila)
> 
> Vega and Altair (but mostly Vega) are important elements of the Tanabata Festival (Star Festival) myth, since they are both part of the Milky Way.
> 
> Also, references for the telescope for anyone who's curious: [here](http://home.europa.com/~telscope/Japan/Telescopes-Group.jpg) & [here](http://home.europa.com/~telscope/Japan/'Honorable-Telescope'.jpg)


	8. viii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All of the pieces begin to slot into place, even as one mystery remains ever-elusive, yet just within reach.

打ち綿 —  後半

_uchiwata — part ii_

 

The sliding door of the inn slams against its frame as Momota flings it open, causing the guest standing at the reception desk to cry out and the cat dæmon at her feet to yowl, fur raised. Shuuichi, bent over a piece of parchment, pauses mid-brush stroke and stares at him with wide, startled eyes. 

“Momota-kun?” His brow creases, the gears in his head already whirring to life, by the looks of it.

Sweat drips down Momota’s face into his eye, but he wipes the salt-sting away with the back of his arm as he makes a beeline for his friend. The woman hurriedly scoops up her dæmon and steps aside before he can barrel into her. Momota’s chest burns with the need to cough, but through his ragged breathing the words begin to spill out, “Hey, sorry for the door and for busting in and all, but there’s something big about to happen—I just _know_ it—and of course you’re the only person I could think of to come up with an idea to help out or at least give me some kind of clue of what I should do before this all goes to sh—”

“Momota-kun.” Shuuichi lays a hand over one of Momota’s where it now white-knuckles the countertop, silencing him. The concerned tilt to his brow remains even as he offers his friend a small, confused smile. “Slow down before you hurt yourself. Did you run all the way here? Do you need something to drink?”

Something in Momota’s gut flares up, gnashing its teeth at the coddling, however kind the intention behind it may be. And isn’t it strange, he thinks, how obvious his deep-seated frustration is, now that he’s starting to recognize it when it rears its ugly head?

Shaking his head to dislodge the thought, he waves a flippant hand and says, “Sure, later, but before that we _need_ to talk.”

Shuuichi breathes out a small laugh. “What on earth could have gotten you so worked up tod—”

“ _Ouma Kokichi_.”

At that, Shuuichi’s smile drops, and it’s as though the temperature of the room drops several degrees with it. After a pregnant pause, he carefully lowers the brush in his hand to rest atop its ink stone as his eyes flicker to the guest, still watching them curiously with her dæmon clutched to her chest. His gaze then flits back to Momota’s, something heavy in the weight of it. “My uncle’s out right now,” he says carefully, “so you can wait in the back room. I’ll join you after I’m finished here.”

Momota nods, pulling his hand out from under Shuuichi’s, but not without giving it a short, thankful squeeze first. 

Reina hops from her human’s side and scampers after Momota, dodging his feet as he belatedly shucks off his _geta_ and starts down the hall. She waits in the doorframe as he and Aquila settle down on the tatami, watching over them as both human and dæmon begin to agitatedly pick at the straw mat.

Normally it would be unsettling to see Shuuichi’s dæmon— usually so rambunctious—acting as quiet and composed as her human counterpart, but there are just too many thoughts running through Momota’s mind at the moment to really care to delve into it. 

He’d spent the entire brisk charge into town running over every odd comment, every scattered piece of evidence Ouma had let slip— purposefully or not—over the past month. Still, no matter how hard he’d thought he hadn’t been able to come to any sort of satisfying conclusion. There were both too many things Ouma had said and yet not nearly enough, every conclusion sifting through Momota’s fingers before he could turn it into something of substance. 

What had Ouma really been scheming? What was that group of his really doing? Why had he left so suddenly, and… wherever he was now, was he even safe? 

He yanks at the straw too hard, plucking a long, yellow strand out with a sharp snap. Reina flinches back, her tail going stiff as a bamboo shoot. 

Momota grimaces and flicks the piece of straw away with a sharp huff as Aquila hops over to calm her friend. 

Well, what did any of it matter in the end, anyway? Ouma had left, proving himself to be the very liar that Momota had always known him to be all along. The only thing that letting himself get caught up in these kinds of regr— _thoughts_ will do is send him further into his own useless spiraling, and that’s that.

If he wants answers, he thinks with a huff, he’ll just have to get them himself. 

The sound of the door sliding shut causes Momota to look up again. Across the way, Shuuichi ducks down to scoop his dæmon up in one hand, the other balancing a tray with a teapot and cups atop it. He doesn’t move right away, though—instead he lets his thumb trail across the crown of the weasel’s head as he stares thoughtfully at her, gaze calculating. Reina nuzzles into his palm, even as her eyes still flicker between the two humans. 

Then, with a weighted sigh, Shuuichi straightens up, closes the door, and moves across the _tatami_ mat and over to Momota. After lowering himself and the tray down and folding his legs underneath him, he says, “You have questions.” A statement, not a question.

Momota lets out a tired laugh. “You don’t know the half of it.”

Shuuichi quirks a small, amused smile at him, but it quickly falls back into something serious. “How do you know Ouma-kun?” he asks, straight to business.

Momota opens his mouth to answer, but then pauses. He ducks his head down to rub at his neck, eyes skirting away almost guiltily. “It’s a long story,” he eventually settles on saying. 

Shuuichi’s brow furrows. After thinking for a moment, he says, “Does that long story happen to start the second time you stopped in, after the _Bon_ festival?”

Leave it to Shuuichi to be so observant. “Give or take a week, yeah,” Momota mutters. 

“I see.” Shuuichi lifts a hand to his chin, deep in thought. 

“But, that’s beside the point,” Momota says, leaning forward into Shuuichi’s space. “Because you know, right? About what’s really going on? Ouma… he said he’s talked to you—something about you and your uncle’s detective gig and his weird deal with the _doushin_ and—”

Shuuichi’s eyes suddenly widen, and quick as a flash his hand shoots up to clap over Momota’s mouth, cutting him off. Momota lets out a muffled squawk, but Shuuichi silences him with a look. “ _Please_ keep your voice down about that,” he says.

When he peels his hand back, Momota doesn’t move, but lowers his voice to a quiet but insistent whisper. “So it’s true then? About him being buddy-buddy with the _daimyo’s_ guards?”

“In a way…,” Shuuichi replies, eyes casting off to the side.

That doesn’t deter Momota. “Ouma said your uncle’s been helping them out recently.” He pauses. “And that he’s been getting you to help them, too.”

Shuuichi turns strangely tight-lipped. His eyes won’t come back to look at Momota, too busy staring off into the distance, his thumb still smoothing across his dæmon’s back. 

“C’mon, Shuuichi,” Momota insists. “You know me. You can trust me, and… and I really need someone to trust, too, right now. I need help.”

That gets him to turn back, a more curious slant to his brow. “Help with what?”

Momota chooses his starting point carefully. “There was a riot in town, right? Sometime last week?” 

“That’s… correct,” Shuuichi replies. 

“And Ouma was involved with it, somehow, right?”

After a hesitant beat, the boy gives him a careful nod. 

Momota shoves his fist into his palm, if only to find an outlet for the churning feeling in his gut, caught somewhere between vindicated and pissed off. “Okay, but how?” he insists, drawing his tightly-clenched fist up to his mouth and lowly tucking the words into his knuckles. “What the hell is actually going on around here?”

Shuuichi doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he leans away from Momota’s crowding presence and sits back, spine straight and imposing. Then, he simply asks, “Why?” 

Momota falters, hand falling away. “Why?”

“Why are you looking to find him?” Shuuichi asks. With a hawklike intensity in his gaze, he searches Momota’s expression as he speaks, “Did something happen? Did he do something to upset you? Is that why you’re looking for him?”

The sudden laugh that hiccups out of Momota startles him almost as much as it seems to startle his friend, whose stern expression drops just a tinge. 

“Yeah. I mean, something like that,” Momota says, reaching the hand up again to rub tiredly at his temple. “But mostly I’m just trying to save his ass before he gets himself killed, or worse.”

Shuuichi blinks at him, eyes wide as though that hadn’t been the answer he’d expected. Then, he too lets out a soft, disbelieving laugh, and with it the severity seems to melt right out of him. His shoulders lose all tension and the weight seems to drag the lines of his body downwards as he he slumps back down on his heels. “Oh thank goodness,” he breathes, the corners of his mouth slanting upwards again. “Please don’t scare me like that again, Momota-kun.”

Momota lightly shoves his friend’s shoulder as another contagious laugh bubbles out of him. “Speak for yourself, you ass! I felt like a rabbit caught in the eyes of an eagle there!”

“Excuse you,” Aquila says, making her presence known again. “I take offense to that.”

That gets a new wave of laughter out of the both of them—stupid and long and carefree—one that gradually decrescendos over time until it’s nothing more than a pleasant murmur nestled in their chests. By the end of it, Shuuichi reaches a hand up to wipe a spot of wetness from his eye, and Momota can’t help but just watch him as he rides out the last of his own wheezing laughter. 

_Gods_ , he’d forgotten just how much he’s missed having Shuuichi around, how fiercely he loves him.

_Enough that you were willing to just give up and let yourself wither out of existence if it meant playing the martyr and saving him with your hidden stash of coins and empty platitudes,_ something in him sneers. _How pathetic._

Watching his friend now as he tries and fails to tamp his expression down behind a politely-raised fist, he thinks _yeah, it had been, hadn’t it_?

“So,” Shuuichi says, coughing into the fist to mask another chuckle. “Just so we’re on the same page, neither of us are looking to harm Ouma-kun, correct?”

Momota snorts. “Maybe I’ll rough him up a bit to get that stupid smile off his face after the mess he’s gotten us into, but that’s it, I promise.”

“That’s a relief.” This time Shuuichi does manage to reign in his expression into something a tad more somber. “Because the same can’t be said for the _daimyo_ and his forces.”

* * *

 

Several long-winded explanations later, Momota slumps back on his hands with a heavy exhale. “ _That’s_ what this is all about? _Taxes?_ ”

Shuuichi nods, taking a quiet sip from the cup of tea he’d poured for himself sometime during his comprehensive retelling of the situation. “I suppose no one back home would have noticed, isolated in the mountains as they are, but here in town the signs are more evident. The _daimyo_ has been steadily raising the rice tax over the past few years, enforcing it in small enough increments that he hoped no one would notice the difference.”

Now that Momota thinks about it, he _had_ had to shell out a few more coins to the village fund last month, hadn’t he? Of course he’d joked about the fee feeling high in in recent months, but he hadn’t been all that serious about it. The rice tax _always_ felt high, after all.

“And it’s not just happening here,” Shuuichi continues. “There have been similar uprisings all across the country, from _Edo_ all the way to _Satsuma_.”

“No shit,” Momota mutters, as though he has any idea what the actual scale of that means.

Shuuichi turns his head away, a troubled dip to his brow. “That’s why my uncle has been making nice with the _doushin_. He travels, as you know, and he has a bit of a history with the _Bakufu_. He saw what the other rebellions have done, as well as how they’ve been dealt with, and decided to make that his niche, I suppose. The local government has been compensating him and in return he’s helped by tamping any insurgencies before they could get too much of a foothold.”

Momota frowns. “Until now.”

Shuuichi sighs, nodding. “It’s all been under the table, of course. To most of the people around here he’s just the batty old inn-keep who disappears every so often and likes keeping up with the local gossip a little too much.”

“Okay, but…,” Momota says, leaning forward over his crossed arms. “How the hell does Ouma factor into this?”

Shuuichi’s response is only to blink. Cautiously, he asks, “Who do you think planted the seeds for the rebellion in the first place?” 

Momota opens his mouth to object on instinct, but after consideration, closes it again. Shuuichi breathes out a short laugh as Momota replies, “Nah, actually that doesn’t surprise me at all.”

“No, I can’t imagine it would,” Shuuichi says around his smile. 

“So the gambling den,” Momota continues, “was that all just a front or something?”

He shakes his head. “No, it had a part to play. From what I’ve gathered, the plan was threefold.” He holds out as many fingers, gesturing with the middle one to start. “First, he and his entourage got in with the owners of the establishment, and with them, its clientele. Apparently, it’s a very loosely-kept secret that _that_ hall in particular is the destination of choice for some of the _daimyo_ ’s men, as well as some of his… seedier connections.”

Momota thinks back, remembering boar tattoos and expensive sake bottles tipped across tatami.He also remembers Maki’s warnings, a little too knowledgeable. “The yakuza _,_ you mean.”

“Which leads nicely into stage two.” Shuuichi wags his index finger this time. “Ouma-kun figured out there was something amiss with the _Ikai-gumi’s_ continued presence in town when most other yakuza factions had been driven out by the _doushin_. Coincidentally, I was looking into the same matter myself when whispers of tax evasion started stirring up around town.”

Shuuichi’s explanations start to filter out as Momota turns what he’s heard over in his head. If the _yakuza_ were really in cahoots with the local government, then what the hell kind of boon would the _daimyo_ get out of that kind of partnership?  
  
Rice taxes, fraud, and _yakuza_ mixed up in pipe smoke… ink-stain tattoos and heavy, golden knockoff coins…

“Oh! Oh shit!” Momota exclaims, smacking his fist into his palm with a resounding crack as Aquila lets out a noisy, awestruck warble, probably coming to the same conclusion. “The damn counterfeit! Oh, that sunovabitch— _that’s_ why he had that phony _ryo_ on him an’… an’ why it didn’t matter if it got mixed in with the rest of the winnings that night!”

Shuuichi shushes him with a finger to his mouth to quiet his triumphant crowing. “Right. It seems the _Ikai-gumi_ have been making counterfeit coins and circulating them into the public sphere by way of the gambling halls. I’d guess investigating the coins themselves was how Ouma-kun and his entourage figured out the connection.”  
  
“But how does that help the _daimyo_?” Momota asks, some of his enthusiasm deflating. 

“Well, what better excuse to raise taxes than as a punishment against the lower classes for attempting weasel out of payments with false currency?” 

Momota pauses. “So you’re saying,” he starts, going slowly as he snowballs through the thought process, “that the _yakuza_ make the counterfeits and use them at the halls, then when the low-class gamblers looking for cash to cover their taxes get their buyout payouts and use them around town, the _doushin_ get to call foul, even when they knew what was going on all along?”

“The _doushin_ themselves might not have a clue, but they have their orders. At least, that’s what it looks like to me,” Shuuichi agrees. “And it seems to be what Ouma pieced together as well in the few months he’s been here.”

“Wait,” Momota interrupts, something about that catching his attention. “Ouma’s not from around here?”

Shuuichi blinks at him. “I’m sorry, was that not apparent?”

Momota mulls the thought over, swirling his own cup of tea and watching the ripples fan out. “Well, when he said he was a traveler the first time he showed up, I thought he was just being an ass to get free lodging,” he mutters.

“Yes, it’s always so hard to tell truth from lie with him,” Shuuichi sighs, knowingly.

“Okay, hold up,” Momota interrupts, nose scrunching up as he glances up from the cup, “why do you keep making it sound like you two’ve actually got some history when Ouma made it sound like you’d barely talked?”

Shuuichi’s lips purse and his eyes dart away. “Well, I wouldn’t quite say we have _history_ …”

“So you _did_ know him!”

“Only rumors at first,” he amends, raising a hand defensively in front of his chest. “Last spring, when I visited Dejima—you remember, I brought back that tonic for you?”

Momota tries to turn his instinctive grimace into a smile. “Ah… aha, yeah, how could I forget it?”

Shuuichi winces anyway, Momota’s acting apparently not up to par. “…my uncle wanted me to prove my worth, so to speak. It wasn’t the first rebellion he’d been asked to look into on the _Bakufu’s_ behalf, but it was a big one, and he wanted my assistance.”

Momota carefully turns over his friend’s words in his head, until the revelation dawns on him. “Ah hell, when you said rebellions all the way from Satsuma to Edo, you don’t mean…?”

Shuuichi’s expression drops into something wry. “Did Ouma-kun ever strike you as a sedentary kind of fellow?”

Momota shifts back on the tatami, slumping back onto his hands with a dazed _whuff_ of a breath. “Well… _shit_.”

“I kept hearing wind of him and his group no matter where my uncle spirited us away to. It became obvious over time that Ouma was involved as I kept catching signs of them everywhere I turned—the checkered handkerchieves aren’t exactly subtle, after all.” The corner of his bottom lip disappears between his teeth no doubt as he pauses, choosing his next words. “…However, the more I learned about their exploits and their process, the more… hesitant I was to let my uncle know of what I’d found. I’d managed to keep him unaware up until now with a few red herrings and dropped details, but now that Ouma-kun has been poking his nose in my uncle’s own backyard it’s become impossible to keep pulling the wool over his eyes.”

Shuuichi pauses then to take a sip from his rapidly-cooling tea, so Momota takes the opportunity and finally asks a question that’s been on his mind from the very start of the conversation: “Why?”

Shuuichi blinks up owlishly at him, lips hovering at the edge of the cup. “Why what?”

Momota’s face screws up as he studies his friend. “Why’re you doing all this for him?” 

“Well… because I started to trust in Ouma-kun,” Shuuichi says, gaze resolute and like it’s the simplest thing in the world. Then he shakes his head, a hand coming up to tuck loose hair behind his ear. “I know that it stood to reason that I shouldn’t, but somehow I still wanted to, and over time I think I started to believe that his methods might be right, in a way. Or at least the only feasible option. You can’t imagine how much corruption there is out there—not just in our neck of the woods—and I’ve seen so many towns where ordinary people trying to fix the feudal system through honest means just wasn’t enough, and I…” 

He gives a disbelieving breath of a laugh. “I can’t quite explain why in a satisfactory way, but…,” at this, he looks up, directly into Momota’s eyes. “You understand too, don’t you?”

And that’s the crux of it all, plain and simple, isn’t it? 

Because, Momota realizes, he kind of does. He might not understand all that’s been going on, and all logic tells him he shouldn’t offer his trust up to so easily to be snatched up by Ouma’s clever, crescent-moon maw, but… he’s found himself doing so anyway. There’s a method to Ouma’s madness—one of good intention, he just _knows_ it, that’s hidden beneath the surface of all his trickery—and at some point along the line he started wanting to puzzle it out for himself. To prove himself, both to himself and to Ouma.

But more than the boy’s methods, maybe he really just wanted to figure Ouma out. Maybe it was really that simple. 

“Yeah, I guess I kind of do,” Momota admits, rubbing a hand at the traitorous swell building up in his chest. “So, now what?”

Shuuichi’s smile softens for a reason Momota can’t place, but it’s gone before he knows it, replaced with something a bit more conspiratorial. “Stage three was the dissemination of information on the counterfeits, and as a result information about the _daimyo’s_ involvement with the yakuza. That meant stoking rumors across town to cause a buzz amongst the townspeople. Enough to spread widely while also not catching the attention of the patrols. Once that happened, all that was left to do was wait for an opportunity.”

“They needed something to set it all off,” Momota jumps in.

“Like kindling waiting for a flint-spark,” Shuuichi agrees. Then, he frowns. “And that was what I thought was happening earlier this week when things began to stir up in the east quarter, but nothing much came of it, so I suppose not…”

“Well, what was supposed to be the spark?” Momota asks. “You’ve gotta have figured that out, at least.”

Shuuichi’s mouth pulls into a grim line, his flat disapproval matched by Reina, quietly peeking her head over his hand. She answers for him, “Well, not _what_ , exactly.…”

That can only mean one thing.

Momota thinks of a cloudless, moonlit night only a few days earlier—blood tangled in dark hair and a dirt path, snaking-off to the deepest corners of a castle ground hidden behind tall, towering walls and crooked tree branches. 

( _Run along home, Momota-chan, before the ghosts and ghouls of this land come out to spirit you away along with me._ )

He groans, dragging a tired hand down his face. “Don’t fucking tell me…”

“Like I said, I’m not technically a part of this,” Shuuichi hastily amends. “I’ve just been following everything and piecing their plans together myself. The most logical strategy would have been a two-pronged attack—one to distract the guards and pull the majority of their forces away from the townsfolk, while the other helped lead the front in town. I assume something went wrong on Ouma-kun’s side and they abandoned the plan before any harm could come.”

“Shit _,_ ” Momota says, moving his hand back up to drag through his hair, tugging agitatedly. “Goddammit _,_ _kasa-obake_ my _ass!_ I fucking _knew_ it was the guards who beat him half-way to death!”

Shuuichi’s brow immediately shoots downwards, just as Reina’s tail shoots up. “ _Beat_ him? Ouma-kun? Is he—?”

“ _No—_ gods _—_ no, he’s _fine_ ,” Momota says, distractedly waving his free hand at Shuuichi even as his thoughts run in circles. “I mean he is _now_ after I took care of his sorry hide, but… _shit!_ ”

“So then… he’s been with you these past few days?"

“Well, he was!” Momota bites, his other hand digging even deeper into his scalp as he lets out a frustrated growl. “Until he fucked off this morning to who knows where! _Dammit_ , if he’s not dead already I’m gonna kill him!”

In the wake of his concern, something softens in Shuuichi’s gaze, oddly enough. As Momota tries to untangle one of his fingers from a stubborn knot, his friend quietly murmurs, “…Thank you for helping him, and for keeping him safe, Momota-kun.”

Momota shocks still, hand still caught in his hair. Warmth begins to creep up his neck along with the strange, full sensation of _something_ building up in the hollow spaces in his chest. He yanks his hand back with a wince, strands of hair falling from his fingers as he scrubs it down over his darkening cheeks. “Gods, you don’t hafta put it like that,” he mumbles into the back of his hand. “But sure, you’re welcome, or whatever…”

Thankfully, Shuuichi drops the matter before Momota can fully drown in this funny, embarrassing feeling, but the boy’s expression turns grim once more. “So, the plan was indeed supposed to go into effect three days ago, but then something happened to Ouma-kun.”

With the heat in his cheeks subsiding, Momota clears his throat and hunkers back down into a thinking position. “Yeah, seems like it. But you said nothing really happened in town, right?”

Shuuichi nods. “I heard that there were stirrings in the east quarter, but by the time I made my way over there to see it for myself, the _doushin_ had already quelled any insurrection.” Taking another sip of tea, Shuuichi shakes his head. “Still, it’s odd. They responded too quickly and with more forces than I would have expected if Ouma-kun had indeed stirred up trouble by the castle itself.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s almost as though,” Shuuichi says, thoughtfully stroking his thumb down his dæmon’s back, “they knew something was coming. Like they knew to expect the distraction.”

Momota wracks his brain for anything of use. “Well, I found him a few days before that doing some shady business on the path through the bamboo grove—you know, the one that goes to the hunting grounds. You remember the one?”

“The one we used to use when visiting Harukawa-san,” Shuuichi says thoughtfully around another sip of tea. “I suppose he found the low-hanging camphor tree in the back corner as a means to get in?”

Momota nods. 

“So they already knew their way into the castle…” Shuuichi mutters. “But why would the guards have known he’d been poking around there? In all the years that the tree has been there, not _one_ of the _doushin_ has ever once seemed to notice that weakness in their defenses.”

Something cold and heavy drops into the pit of Momota’s stomach. 

“No,” he says, a hollow chill coming over him as realization dawns, “I can think of one.”

Shuuichi’s brow furrows, but before he can say anything, the ground begins to rattle with the weight of very hurried, forceful footsteps before the door to the back room is flung open. There stands a girl, breathless with her hands braced on the doorframe, her kimono in mild disarray, and hair sticking to her sweat-slick face. “Saihara-kun!” she manages through harsh breaths as she pushes a few strands out of her eyes. 

“Akamatsu-san?” Shuuichi’s eyes widen for a split second, but the next moment his expression hardens and in an instant he’s already moving to his feet. “Where? In the east quarter?”

The girl—Akamatsu, apparently—laughs wryly, “The east quarter, the market-place, the red-light district— _everywhere_! You name a place and there’s trouble already brewing.”

“Right.” Shuuichi gathers up the teacups, plucking Momota’s out from between his loose fingers. “Have you spotted any of the members in the throngs of it?”

“The one with the goat dæmon was riling up the crowd down by the kimono shop, and I spotted two of the girls gathering up people by the rice paddies. I bet we can find that burlier guy nearby here if we hurry.”

“And my uncle?”

“I saw him rushing off towards the guards' quarters at the first sign of trouble.”

Shuuichi pauses. “So they’re spreading out this time?” Reina pipes up from her perch at his shoulder. 

“Seems like it,” the girl replies.

“Hey,” Momota says, scrambling up onto his feet as the girl pushes off of the doorframe to start back off down the hall and Shuuichi follows diligently after. “Hey, wait, are you saying the riots have started up again?”

The girl looks over her shoulder at him from the end of the hall as she slips her feet back into a pair of worn _geta_ by the door. With a nod of her head in his direction, she asks Shuuichi, “A friend of yours?”

He nods as he leaves the teacups behind the front desk and turns a placard over from _welcome_ to _currently busy_. “Yes, from back home.”

She narrows her eyes at Momota as he emerges out from the hallway with a fluttering Aquila in tow. “A friend of _ours_?”

Momota bristles at her hostility, but before he can say anything Shuuichi has already rounded the desk and laid a comforting hand across her arm. “Akamatsu-san, this is Momota-kun. He knows. He was taking care of Ouma-kun after his disappearance.”

Momota instantly flusters, stammering, “I-I wouldn’t put it like that, Shu—”

A wave of tension washes out of the girl on a relieved exhale, but she tries to mask it behind a pair of hunched shoulders and crossed arms. “Well, if Ouma-kun’s been found, that certainly explains the mess we’re currently in!”

“I’m sorry,” Momota interrupts, “who are you and why do you know about all this stuff?”

“Akamatsu Kaede,” she says with a wry smile and a perfunctory bow.

“Her family owns the _koto_ shop next door,” Shuuichi supplies, now slipping his own _geta_ on as well. “She helps out here, occasionally.”

“And you,” she says as she slides the inn door open, a sly glint in her eye. Over her shoulder, Momota sees a spry-looking deer-like creature with golden fur and corkscrew-horns that shoot up towards the sky. The dæmon paws at the dirt anxiously as Akamatsu draws close and smoothes a soothing hand down his back. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Momota Kaito.”

Aquila takes like an arrow to the open sky past him while Momota stops in his tracks in the open doorway, “You have?”

Shuuichi clears his throat loudly as he passes Momota in the doorway. There’s a red dusting across his cheeks as he says, a bit insistently, “Another time, perhaps, we can have more formal introductions.”

Akamatsu looks like she really wants to say something more, but she acquiesces. “So,” she says, addressing Momota, “are you coming with us? Things might get hairy the further into town we get from hereon out, but Farai’s horns don’t tend to have much of a problem clearing a path in the crowds.” She pats her dæmon’s haunch and he chuffs proudly.

“I…” Momota starts, trailing off. 

Of course he wants to help Shuuichi, especially if things might get dangerous. He doesn’t know _what_ he’d do if anything were to happen to him out there, and he’s curious to see how the riots pan out, or how the _doushin_ will deal with the sheer number of people out there, judging from the hollering he can already hear on the thick summer air. By all means he should join them.

…but.

As if pulled by a magnet, Momota’s gaze turns off towards the forest, the black shingles of the castle looming just above the tree line on the other side of the valley. The anxious weight swelling in his chest seems to tug him towards it, not unlike the gentle pull he feels anchoring his skyward dæmon down to him.

“You know, Momota-kun.” Momota looks back down to find Shuuichi, his own eyes trained on the valley.“It’s nice to see you looking so high-spirited again. I’ve really missed it.” 

Momota blinks. “Huh?”

But he just shakes his head with a fond, wistful smile. “Nothing. Just, please be careful, and give my regards to Ouma-kun.”

Momota opens his mouth, already ready to deflect, but at the knowing look in Shuuichi’s eye, he sighs, the corner of his mouth tugging upwards into a lopsided grin. “I’ll give him a good smack to the back of his head, if that’s what you mean.”

Shuuichi breathes a laugh, “Close enough.” Then, more earnestly, “Stay safe.”

“Yeah,” Momota nods, clapping a hand to his friend’s shoulder. “You too.”

And with that, Shuuichi and Akamatsu take off down the street towards the swell of voices somewhere beyond the row of houses and storefronts. Momota takes a breath to steady himself—feeling an ache in his lungs that just can’t quite compare to the swell of emotions fighting to burst forth and escape him—then starts off in the opposite direction. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pros: my fingers remembered how to write this fic again, finally  
> cons: they only remembered how to write exposition, making what I thought would be the last chapter into a lead-in chapter instead
> 
> Whoops. 
> 
> Anyway, happy 2019 remember when I thought I could finish this fic within a few months? Hah, wild. Thankfully, some very good writers wrote some very good things that I got to catch up on just as my time freed up again, fueling my need to get back to this and deliver on that ending. We're (hopefully) back babyyyyy only one (?) more chapter to go.


	9. ix

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just as a river runs, so too does Momota.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just call me Ouma Kokichi bc I am apparently *jazz-hands at the chapter count*... a liar. 
> 
> Also, this might be a good time to [read up on the rules of dæmons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A6mon_\(His_Dark_Materials\)) if you're not familiar with them.

 

屋島の禿

_yashima no hage_

 

 

  

 

Momota’s lungs are screaming. The cicadas around him try their best to scream even louder still. Every breath claws like glass down his dry throat as thick humidity clings to every inch of his skin, as though it could drown him on nothing but air. 

Even so, he runs. His heart thunders in his chest, rattling out against his rib cage like it could break out of him at any moment. Still he runs. He runs and he runs, against the sun beating down across his back, against all odds. 

High above him, Aquila lets out a rally-cry that pierces the air and echoes through the valley. The rice paddies stretch out like oceans on either side of the levee he follows along. As he races down the dirt path, the water reflects the sky above, shallow mirrors dug into the ground that throw light into his eyes as each one passes. Even with his chin ducked down to his chest, he can see Aquila reflected in the water’s surface as she dips and dives through the sky like an errant kite, the gray arc of her wings cutting through the rippling blue. The anchor of their bond, nestled solid and warm right at the center of the pain blooming throughout his chest, urges him onwards after her, guiding him forward.

Every step is agonizing. Still, he can’t remember ever feeling so alive. 

A breath like a laugh hiccups out of him, even as his entire body protests against it. 

“Kaito?” he hears his dæmon call out, but he only laughs more glass out from his throat.

“I’m fine!” he calls back between hoarse breaths. “Keep going!”

And they do—past the rice paddies and shambling farmhouses, past startled villagers and aimless, wandering livestock. Sweat drips down his face into his eyes, but he doesn’t care. Gravel bites into his bare heels, but he barely notices. The forest draws ever closer as the castle’s walls loom ever higher, disappearing into the tree line.

He has to make it there. He has to be the one to find Ouma first. He _has_ to.

He’s so caught up in this single-minded focus that he’s caught completely off guard by the sudden, sharp tug at his hair. As his head jerks back, his balance falters and he lurches sideways, stumbling into an ox-cart stopped at the side of the road. He barely manages to catch his hands on the lip of the cart before his legs begin to give way underneath him. 

“ _Aqui_ —” he growls, or at least tries to before a cough wrenches itself out of him once, then once more. Two coughs turn to three, then a full-out fit. He sinks down to his haunches, shoving his face into the crook of his arm as he waits for the fit to subside. 

“I know _._ ” Above the curve of his arm he sees Aquila flutter to land in the shade of the cart beside him. To her credit, she at least sounds apologetic. “But you need to slow down, just for a short while.” 

His eyes narrow and he opens his mouth to say something, but another raw punch of airexpunges itself from his aching lungs. 

Aquila glares right back at him, her neck extending outward in a familiar, stern stance. “I _know_ , Kaito,” she insists, “but we’re of no use to them _dead_.”

Before he can even try to reply again, she’s fluttering off to the other side of the cart. He notices her list sideways as she does and clip the edge, but doesn’t say anything. She can be just as prideful as he can, he knows only too well. 

Instead, he lets the cart support his weight as he slumps against it and tries to steady his breathing. It’s almost as though Aquila yanking his head had unplugged the stopper holding all his desperate energy within him, and now he feels it pool out of him into the ground below him. His body aches, and his throat just won’t open up enough to work against the acute sensation of suffocating. Just a short break, then. Then he’ll be off running again. The edge of the forest is so, so close.

He presses his forehead further into his arm and tries not to count the precious seconds he’s wasting away. 

Instead, he focuses on breathing—in, out. His throat fights against it, but he fights back harder. In, out. He tries to center his mind elsewhere. He thinks about target practice and lazy summer afternoons, plumes of steam from tea cups and sunset festival-songs, gold coins and starry nights. Methodical knife strokes through wood. Rainfall on a solitary red umbrella. His muscles loosen, his shoulders sag. 

The next breath comes easy, and the next easier still. 

Wing beats and a set of approaching footsteps cause him to peel his sleeve away from his face. Aquila swoops down and nudges her beak against his loose, dangling fingers as the footsteps stop and a young girl tips her head around the side of the cart with wide, fascinated eyes. “Oh, yes,” she says, a slight accent coloring her speech, “he does look bad. Angie sees what you mean!” 

Momota’s about to retort when he hears something beside him and stifles a curse as he jerks back, almost knocking his head into the cart. The strange, plated animal that sidles up to him extends its two front paws out, a long tongue absently flitting out of its narrow snout. Clutched between its long, clawed toes is a plump waterskin. 

Momota cautiously reaches out to take it. The dæmon, apparently pleased with its work, continues on its way and over to its human. Its long, scaly tail drags through the dirt like a rudder. “The hell is that?” Momota mutters quietly under his breath. 

Not quietly enough, apparently. The girl laughs brightly, bending down to scoop the creature up in her arms as he gawks. “Melchor is Melchor! But Melchor is also a _balintong_. You are not the first person to ask!”

Momota eyes the long, dangling tail. In return, the dæmon flicks his tongue out again, blinking his tiny, pinprick eyes at Momota. “… right,” Momota eventually settles on in response.

It doesn’t seem to offend the girl, at least, as she carries on without missing a beat. “Angie saw you running! She told Melchor it was like watching a river flush with storm water, that she did!” She stops abruptly and frowns, cheeks puffing out almost comically. “River-boy, what are you waiting for? Drink!”

Momota jerks out of his stupor. At the mention of water, his throat flares up once more, demanding his attention with a short but still painful cough. He pulls his eyes down from her dæmon to his still unsteady hands and fumbles to uncork the waterskin. 

“You are the first great river to come rushing through the valley today,” she continues as Momota guzzles down the cool drink. “And oh, what fortune you bring! It seems the stars were right!”

At Momota’s raised eyebrow (still too busy downing the water with reckless abandon to properly reply), she elaborates. “Last night, you see, the Heavenly River was just so full—simply over _flowing_ with potential with how brightly it shone! And yet so tumultuous too. Angie knew something big was sure to come, and look! She was right!” She finishes with an emphatic gesture of her outstretched arms in his direction.

Momota pulls the waterskin away with a crisp exhale, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “You know the Milky Way isn’t an _actual_ river, right?”

Angie hoists her dæmon into the curve of her arm, reaching out to wag her free hand in his face. “Ah, but a river is a river, no matter its form, and all rivers run somewhere. Now, where do you run to, River-boy?”

“Excuse me?”

“It was a simple question! Towards which end does your current run?” She cocks her head sideways, pulling her finger to her chin. Her gaze dips down to Aquila. “Bound to the Eagle as you are, did you leave your star to find your star-weaver on the distant shore?”

When she looks back up to Momota in question, there’s a strange heaviness to her gaze. Haunting, in a way. Familiar in its otherworldly weight. He shivers against a sudden chill even as the sun bakes down on him. “What are you _talking_ about?”

But then something in the distance beyond her pressing gaze catches his attention before he can hear her response. Standing out in vivid contrast against the bright blue of the sky, something small and black bursts out from the canopy of the forest. As Momota narrows his gaze against the harsh sunlight, the shape comes into focus—a bird, wings dark and desperate as they propel the small body forward in a hurried flight from the woods.

Something in Momota’s chest stutters. 

But no, that can’t be right. At that distance it would be impossible.

_(But what has he ever been if not impossible? What’s one more impossibility, really, in the grand scheme of things?)_

Momota’s legs protest, but he blindly gropes for the lip of the cart to pull himself back up to standing, eyes never leaving the approaching figure. Out of his periphery, he sees the girl turn her head up to follow him. “Ah,” he hears her say, “and so the flock of birds comes to escort you on your way. Truly an auspicious sign, indeed!” 

But Momota isn’t listening. He pushes himself off of the cart, absently handing the waterskin off as he steps back out of the shade and into the open levee road. He feels claws briefly brush against his loose fingers as the waterskin falls from them, hears the girl make an aborted sound as he passes by her, but he doesn’t look. He feels a gust of air across his face as Aquila takes to the sky past him. The black bird grows closer, passing the edge of the forest and out into open air. 

He has to follow.

“Good luck and good tidings to you, River-boy!” he hears Angie call after him, her cheerful, tittering laughter fading out behind him as he starts off in single-minded pursuit.

Ahead, the bird dips once, swooping up in a sharp arc before diving once more. The beating of her wings is erratic, and she lists back and forth with no wind to cast her in such a way. Still, she pushes herself forward with a frantic energy.

Something cold begins to build in the pit of Momota’s stomach. He doesn’t know what, but something is wrong with her. And if something is wrong with her… 

He picks up the pace, from walking to jogging, jogging to running. Soon he’s all but sprinting, the aches in his body a distant thought compared to the unease twisting up his insides. The world passes by in a blurred sea of colors. Aquila’s bond tugs him forward as they both beeline towards the quickly approaching crow. Every footfall brings him closer, until he can see the light cast iridescent colors through the black of her wings, until she’s almost right upon them. 

Then, without any warning, the wingbeats stop. The crow hangs weightless in the air for an impossibly long, breathless second, but a second later she plummets down towards the earth.

It’s almost enough to make Momota shock to a stop as well, but he only has a moment to make a decision that by all means is very dumb, very reckless, and very much against every social standard he has ever been taught. His mind screams at him that he knows he shouldn’t, he _knows,_ but—

His body makes the decision for him, unquestioningly. 

He dives forward for her, arms outstretched. 

The moment he feels sun-warmed feathers against the pads of his fingers, something electric sings through him, exploding like a firework at his core. Fighting through the sensation, he throws his weight sideways. His body hits the ground hard, and he skids across the path, sending a cloud of dust billowing up around him. He makes sure to tuck his arms carefully to his chest, shielding the feather-light weight held between them and the sparking, molten rush pooling inside him both with every ounce of care he has in him.

The dust settles. Momota lays there, body throbbing and heart thudding wildly. The world goes still. A light gust of wind brushes against his arms, and he hears talons crunch against dirt. When he peels his eyes open, he finds Aquila waiting in front of him, her stance stiff and her eagle-eyes sharp as they stare pointedly down at his chest. 

Momota pants as his breathing evens out again. Then he swallows thickly as he steels himself for what comes next. It hurts, but he unfolds his arms slowly, dipping his eyes down to follow his dæmon’s gaze. 

Nestled between his forearms is the unconscious form of Metis. And it _is_ her, he’s so absolutely sure of it. It’s not the note tied to her leg that convinces him—though it does ring a distant bell somewhere in the back of his mind. It’s something specific in the lingering, tingling warmth in his fingers where they cradle her that has nothing to do with the sun’s screaming heat. It feels wrong and right in equal parts.

“Kaito,” he hears Aquila say, her voice thin and reedy, “what have you…”

“Where is he?” he asks breathlessly. “If she’s here, then where the hell is he?”

Aquila’s head pivots back and forth wildly. “No, no you can’t just ignore this, Kaito!” she stutters. “That’s _bad_ Kaito, really bad! You can’t just go and touch someone’s— _gods_ , you know what messing with ancestral _kami_ means! We’re going to be cursed for an eternity at this rate, or two, or worse!”

At her distressed, punctuative squawk, Momota shoots a glare at her, feeling his arms instinctively pull Metis closer to his chest. “Hey, I couldn’t just let her _drop!_ ” 

Aquila stiffens up at that, claws picking at the dirt in an anxious titter, sharp gaze never leaving the line Momota’s fingers cut across the dæmon’s black wings. After a beat, she fluffs up and turns away with an embarrassed warble. “No, no, you’re right,” she concedes. “You’re _right_ , we need to…” her head swivels back. “Oh I can’t stand it, Kaito, please tell me she’s alright. I mean, she’s not…?”

Keeping one hand cupped around the bulk of Metis’ body, Momota pushes himself up to sitting, wincing all the while. His arm is scuffed up to shit, and his head’s throbbing, but that can wait. He slowly lowers his arm to get a good luck at the dæmon held within them. She looks smaller than he remembers. More fragile. Some of her feathers sit wrong, but to his own knowledge and experience with a bird dæmon of his own, nothing else seems amiss besides that. A relieved sigh rushes out of him.

His first instinct is to smooth the feathers back into place, as he would Aquila’s if she were in a similar state, but the weight of his actions begins to creep in, catching up to him belatedly. He pauses, hand hovering hesitantly above the foreign dæmon. It’s all very silly, really, since his other hand is already carefully cupping her in his lap, but it’s one thing to just hold her, while it’s something else entirely to deliberately reach out and… and…

Sucking in a sharp breath, Momota swallows down his hesitation and purposefully lowers his hand to settle atop the curve of the crow’s sleek black feathers. The same, strange shock of warmth runs through him again, not as violent as before, but still sharp enough to cause the muscles in his arm to clench as he gently tucks her tertial feathers back into place. Across from him, the ring of feathers around Aquila’s neck and the crown of her head has reached an almost unbelievable level of ruffling as she squirms. He’d laugh if he weren’t feeling so… strange.

“She’s…,” Momota mumbles as his fingers slide across the last of Metis’ tail feathers. He shakes away the pins and needles sensation that lingers in his fingertips. “Yeah, I think she’s okay. I mean she’s not…”

“Right,” Aquila says, before he can finish the sentence with words neither of them want to think about.

“Which means he’s probably still…?”

She nods. “Right.”

Momota narrows his gaze and surveys the scenery around them. “And there’s no way he’s just—”

Aquila shakes her head. “Not a chance.”

Momota drags his free hand through his hair, stunned. “How in the hell…”

“Well,” Aquila says, hopping forward and dipping her head down to peer even closer at the crow in his lap, “there might be an answer in there.” 

Momota looks down to the note tied to the dæmon’s leg. “That could work,” he agrees, gently slipping his hand out from under Metis’ body and over to the loose ends of the knot. 

Just as he digs his nail in and pries it open, the leg gives a tiny kick. It’s the only warning he gets to pull back before his lap erupts in a flurry of feathers and movement. He bites back a startled yelp and flings his arms up as Metis jerks violently back to waking and smacks him across the face with one of her wings. Aquila jumps backwards, her own wings shooting out defensively as she lets out a shocked warble. 

“Get your hands off of me!” the crow cries, writhing in Momota’s lap in her efforts to right herself. “What do you think you’re _doing?_ Pervert! Fiend! Unhand me this instant!”

Her talons sink into Momota’s thigh viciously as they search for purchase and he hisses out a curse, “ _Ow_ , shit!”

The chaos stops abruptly. Wings splayed out at awkward angles at either side, the dæmon finally blinks up at him. Her beak chitters a few times and she blinks. “Momota-chan?”

Momota cautiously lowers his hands, peering at her over his arms. “Well, that’s as good a sign as any that it’s you,” he says. 

Metis gapes at him for a long moment, letting her eyes track his hands, down his chest, and then finally to the curve of his crossed legs, nestled around her. 

“I…,” Momota tries to explain when his skin starts to prickle under her silent scrutiny. “I know this doesn’t look good, but… look, maybe you don’t remember, but you were heading out of the forest and then I don’t know what happened, but you started to fall all of a sudden, so—”

Metis cuts him off with another mouthful of feathers as she uses her wings to shift and get her feet under her. He brings his hands up to shield his face again as she flaps out of his lap and back onto solid ground. “Hey!” he protests, but Metis is already several hopping paces away.

She doesn’t make it far, as Aquila swoops in front of her with wings spread wide. “Oh no you don’t,” she says, dwarfing the crow as she rises to her full height and wingspan. 

Metis doesn’t seem fazed as she cocks her head at the larger dæmon in challenge. “Let’s not turn this into a size-contest, darling. I have places to be, so if you’ll excuse me.”

She tries to skirt around the eagle, but Aquila moves to block her off at every turn. Metis begins to chitter irritatedly after she’s cut off for the third time. “Any other day and I’d just _love_ to engage in this little song and dance we have going on here,” she says, ruffling her feathers crossly as she hops back from Aquila’s insistent talons, “but right now is _really_ not the time.”

Aquila claws at the dirt and angrily snaps her beak at the smaller dæmon. “No, I think it’s a fine time to—!”

“Aquila.” The eagle looks back to Momota with a startled look as Momota calls her off. Metis turns to look at him with a suspicious tilt of her head. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, to reach down to the crow’s eye-level. “You weren’t flying out of there to come and get me, were you?” he asks.

Metis turns her beak up to the air with a harsh cawing laugh. “You’re cute, Momota-chan, but what can I say? I’m a popular girl.”

That stings just slightly, but really, Momota knew not to expect so much. At the end of the day, he’s starting to get a sense of where Ouma’s priorities lie, try as the other boy might to hide them. At a time like this, where Momota falls among those priorities isn’t nearly as important, especially when he’s got his own order of priorities to deal with. 

“If you’ve got other places to be, then fine. I won’t try to stop you,” he says, narrowing his eyes resolutely at her. “But first you’re going to tell me where I can find Ouma.”

Metis hops even closer towards him, tilting her head up at him so they’re both eye to eye. “And why should I tell you that?” she says smartly.

“Because,” Momota replies, “I’m going to save him and everyone else.”

Metis scoffs. “Always looking to play hero, aren’t you Momota-chan?”

Momota can’t help it—he lets out a short laugh. She narrows her gaze, but he simply replies, “See, you say that like it’s a bad thing, which is all the more reason I’ve got to prove you wrong—both of you.”

Then, without thinking, he reaches up and gently flicks a finger down the hard curve of her beak. Another shiver of warm pins-and-needles runs through his finger, causing him to jerk back and Metis to do the same. 

Metis comes out of her brief, shocked spell with a full-bodied shake, then looks over her wing at the path Momota and Aquila had come running down. After a beat, she glances back at the forest, and then once more back towards town. On the third take, she catches Momota’s insistent gaze and ruffles funnily under the attention. 

“Well?” Aquila prods.

Metis dips her head down for a long, quiet moment. “You two are truly hopeless,” she mutters, barely audible.

Then, without looking at either of them, she hops forward a few paces and straightens up. “Fine, you win. Do try to keep up,” is all she says before she casts her wings out and takes off to the sky. 

Aquila is quicker on the uptake, shooting off into the air after her with only a second or two’s delay. Momota scrambles out of his cross-legged stance and up to his feet to chase after them both, but as he rights himself, he sees the note left forgotten in the dirt. Casting a look at the two dæmons, he quickly snatches the parchment up and gives it a cursory glance-over. 

It says: _It’s truly been an honor and a privilege, comrades! Hope my distraction helped. I’ll be waiting at the gates of Hell, but please do take your time in getting here._

Momota can’t hold back his grimace as he swallows down the pang in his chest and angrily crumples the note in his palm. The bond tugs at his chest as Aquila dips further and further out of range, so he tosses the parchment aside and starts off after her. 

_Hell can kiss my ass_ , he swears, as he dips into the forest’s shade. He’s going to prove Ouma wrong no matter what. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

The air is thick and the forest claustrophobic. Momota does his best to dip under branches and vault over moss-covered rocks as the gentle tether to his dæmon guides him in the right direction. Walls of yellowing-bamboo quickly transition into tall, narrow pines in wave-like slopes and valleys, all eclipsed by the occasional towering camphor tree casting shadows along the mossy forest floor. The trail Metis’s black form cuts through the trees doesn’t stick to an easy path, but if it means Momota can get to his destination faster, then all the better. She disappears in patches of light and shadow quicker than he can process, but he leaves it up to Aquila’s eagle-eyes to keep him on the right path. 

Still, Metis is far smaller, and seemingly unburdened by a bond. Aquila can only follow as far as Momota allows her, and he’s only human. 

At the top of a brief plateau shaded by a large tree with sun-baked leaves and pine needles littering the ground, he finds Aquila waiting for him atop a fallen tree trunk. 

Momota catches up to her and doubles over with his hands braced on his knees. “You didn’t…?” he asks between gulping breaths. 

Aquila shakes her head. “No, not exactly. I didn’t see where she dove, but it’s somewhere down there,” she says, nodding her beak over towards the far edge of the opening. “They’ve got to be close.”

Momota nods, straightening up to take a look. 

The underbrush at the other end of the plateau slopes down into a shaded basin, which itself cuts off sharply over a ravine carved into the side of the mountain by years of rainwater, by the looks of it. The sun lingers too low in the sky to reach most of this side of the mountain, turning the underbrush into a murky sea of dark, shadowy greens. Momota squints his eyes, painstakingly tracking each and every tree and rock until— _there_.

Huddled with his back against the thick trunk of an oak tree, nestled right at the edge of the sloping ravine only a stone’s-throw away, is a familiar, wild tuft of dark hair. 

A relieved breath whooshes out of Momota before he can hold it back as he sees the flutter of black wings from Ouma’s lap, only made more relieved as he watches Ouma’s hand come up to gently push them closed. It’s short lived, though, because just as he opens his mouth to call out, Ouma’s left hand moves to grab something up by his right arm, and it’s just strange enough to cause Momota to stop short. 

He frowns. What _is_ that? He can’t tell well enough from his vantage point, so he crouches down and tries to slip closer down into the underbrush. Best not to spook Ouma, flighty as he is. 

As he approaches, Ouma thankfully doesn’t appear to notice him, too busy staring down into his lap with a determined cut to his gaze. His breathing is just as labored as Momota’s own, if not even more-so. His hand white-knuckles the object, and just as realization begins to dawn on Momota, he watches as Ouma grits his teeth and rips the narrow piece of wood away from his body.

Momota tries to stifle his shocked hiss as he watches Ouma tear the arrow out from his arm, only to then cast it over the side of the ravine. If he makes a noise at all, Ouma doesn’t seem to notice as he hunches over, bangs falling across his face and hand already flying up to no-doubt staunch the bleeding. 

Momota’s just about to give up the ghost and run over to him when something causes him to stop.

Later, he might chalk it up to fate, but for one still moment, the cicada songs fall into a lull, and in that one single instant, a twig snaps somewhere high up in the trees—not in Ouma’s direction, but from somewhere up the valley behind them.

Aquila’s head snaps to attention at the sound, Momota’s not too far after. The canopy behind them is still a swaying sea of every shade of green he can imagine. Momota doesn’t even know where to begin to look for the sound—that is, until one of the shadows in the trees higher up in the valley begins to move. 

Light flashes across a yellow eye, and a long black tail gently sways between overlapping branches. 

Momota stills. He’d know that dæmon anywhere.

Muttering a curse under his breath, he follows the line of Nirav’s predatory gaze and is unsurprised to see it perfectly track to the oak tree. What does surprise him, though, is how oddly relaxed the dæmon looks when he glances back. The black beast doesn’t make to move; instead, he lowers himself into a relaxed sprawl along the line of his perch. It’s almost like he’s content to simply watch Ouma. It’s almost like he doesn’t even care to go after the boy himself. 

Which can only mean…

Momota’s eyes immediately shoot down to the base of the tree. 

There, by the thick, gnarled roots of the tree, is Maki. She looks as effortlessly pristine as ever, almost melting into the shadow of the camphor tree just as her dæmon had. She’s forgone most of her armor, save for the breast-plate strapped across her chest. He can barely make it out against the dark colors of her shirt and _hakama_ , which themselves blend in almost perfectly with the scenery around her. Like her dæmon, her eyes are trained on the figure in the distance. In her hand is the familiar curve of her bow, which she elegantly lifts up to the sky, just above her head.

Momota’s blood runs cold. He can’t stop himself from saying, “Haru—”

But as he watches on, Maki raises her other hand and nocks the arrow nestled between her fingers along the ridge of her left knuckle. Her arms arc gracefully through the air as they pull away to opposite sides of her face. The line goes taut. Time slows. Her gaze is resolute as her entire body swells into the crest of a long, steady breath.

Momota is already moving before he can think twice _._

Several things happen simultaneously. Ouma turns his head up to the approaching sound, his uninjured arm raised like a shield for the dæmon clutched to his chest. The whistle of an arrow sings through through the air until suddenly it doesn’t. Angry, searing heat licks through Momota’s forearm like coals—bright-hot and buried deep under his skin.

(The last thing, though, is the unfiltered thought that occurs to him within the split second Ouma’s wide, terrified gaze makes contact with his. _There could be an entire night sky hidden in those eyes,_ he thinks as he tucks the boy against his chest, just as the open air past the lip of the ledge swallows them both up.)

 

 

 

“ _Momota!_ ” he hears, just before the ground rises up to meet him, and everything goes dark.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter _will_ be up within the coming week, I promise! This one was just getting far too long and a natural split point presented itself.
> 
> Also, the biggest thank you to everyone who has given kudos, bookmarked, and especially to those of you who have commented. I'm terrible at responding bc I rarely know what to say, but they have all been so kind and inspiring, and nothing has pushed me to fight through mental roadblocks more!


	10. x

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The river runs its course. Momota and Ouma reach an understanding, just as summer reaches its end.

 

八咫烏

_yatagarasu_

 

 

 

Momota comes to slowly. A persistent beam of light warms his eyelids to waking, and he screws them shut even further against the brightness. Pain filters in in steadily building increments. It starts deep in the crown of his head, throbbing dully against the cotton-wool sensation clouding his mind, but as one shock of pain registers, it starts off a chain reaction. He feels the bruises and bumps across his sides and legs and the dirt-rough scrapes up his arms, but mostly he feels the stabbing pain radiating out from his forearm. 

Groaning, he cracks one eye open and peers out. The bottom of the ravine is a sea of _kudzu_ vines, through which his arm extends out from his body like a beaten dock. As soon as the cotton haze clears enough to register what he’s looking at, Momota has to fight against a wave of nausea that threatens to purge his stomach.

Sickening as it is, he somehow can’t bring himself to tear his eyes away from the arrow protruding through the meat of his forearm. It’s not too deep, and at some point during the fall the bulk of the shaft must have broken off, but some of it still remains lodged within him. Blood sluggishly oozes out around the remaining piece. 

Sound from somewhere off to the side catches his attention, so he gladly peels his gaze away from the wound. His vision as well as his thoughts are still a little fuzzy around the edges, but one thought bubbles to the surface ahead of the rest.

_Ouma_. 

Gently maneuvering his uninjured arm, he pushes himself up onto his side to get a better view of his surroundings. Aquila herself is stirring to waking on a cushion of _kudzu_ leaves not far off from him. Just behind her must be the slope they came tumbling down. He can see skid marks in the dirt and a trail of broken twigs and ripped vines left in their wake. He remembers Ouma’s weight against his chest vividly—remembers locking his arms around him tightly even as his forearm sang with pain—which means that if that path was their starting point, then he must be…

Fighting against a painful crick in his neck, Momota turns his head to look further into thebasin. Sure enough, he sees Ouma, spilling out like a rag-doll against the bed of vines from where he must have rolled out of Momota’s arms. A wave of panic hits him like a punch to the chest at the sight of his motionless body, but then he catches Metis’s beak peeking out from a thick patch of _kudzu._ He lets out a painful but relieved breath for what feels like the thousandth time that day. If she hasn’t scattered to nothingness yet, then it means Ouma must still be alive. 

Still, he needs to get over to him just to make sure. As much as he hates the thought of it, that means he’ll have to use his injured arm. If he can just avoid any direct pressure on his forearm, then he should be fine. With that in mind, Momota sucks in a breath, rolls onto his side, and plants his elbow into a soft patch of dirt, ready to ease himself up. 

Just as he’s steeling himself to move, another snapping sound from somewhere behind him catches his attention. As he turns to look, he sees a large black shape launch itself down from an overhead branch. 

Nirav lands in the center of the clearing with impossible grace, only rivaled by his human counterpart as she carefully navigates down a less-steep part of the slope and steps out into the dappled light.  Her gaze immediately tracks to Momota, and her eyes widen. Something in her expression softens as she takes him in, the stiffness in her shoulders relaxing. She grimaces as her eyes land on the last bit of arrow jutting out of his arm. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs lowly. “That wasn’t meant for you.” 

“I know,” he assures her as she carefully sets her bow against a fallen tree and starts forward. Instead of walking in his direction, however, she veers further into the clearing. “Harumaki…”

“I’m glad you’re safe,” she says, obviously aimed at him, though her attention is focused elsewhere,“…but this never would have happened if you’d done as I said and let me handle everything.”

As she stalks towards Ouma, the boy and his dæmon both remain motionless. Momota tries again to move himself up to sitting, but the stinging pain shooting up his arm amounts to limited success. “Harumaki, wait,” he says, panic creeping into his voice, “you don’t have to do this.”

She stops just before Ouma and looks down at his unconscious form with an unreadable expression. Her voice is soft and contemplative as she speaks, “When you told me about the coin you’d been given, I really did think you were dreaming. If I’d only put two and two together earlier, I could have taken care of this mess so much sooner. If I hadn’t lost him in the rain that night, you never would have gotten involved in the first place.” Her hands clench, briefly, at her sides. “That was… careless of me.”

Momota stares at her, remembering the summer storm that now feels like a lifetime ago. He shakes his head, eyes never leaving her, “It’s not your fault. You didn’t know the whole story.”

“And you do?” She lets out a short, dry laugh, barely a breath. With one _tabi_ -clad foot, she nudges Ouma onto his back. His head lolls limply across the _kudzu._ “The story _he_ told you, I assume?”

Momota winces, already predicting her line of reasoning. “I know, but—“

Maki silences him with a glare. “Is what you know that he’s a serial liar and a proven criminal? It must not be, because if you knew that, why would anything he’s said still hold any weight with you?” She’s trying to keep her tone even, but something ripples in the pained cut of her brow. “You’ve got a good heart, Momota, but you’ve always been too easily swayed by a good story. ”

That stings, but he doesn’t cave. “It’s really not what you think.” He winces as he finally manages to sit up fully. “Look, I’ll be the first to admit that Ouma might not have the cleanest record, but there’s more going on here than just him—a _lot_ more.”

She scoffs. “Momota, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I do,” he states firmly. “This is bigger than you can see—than what you’ve been _allowed_ to see because of everything that’s been blinding you.”

“What I see,” she says, something fierce building under the surface of her words, “is a pest who does nothing but cause trouble wherever he goes, one who corrupts everything he touches. If he had his way, he’d corrupt you too, and I don’t…” Her eyes turn pointedly to Momota, harsh disbelief written plain as day across her features. “I don’t get why you can’t see that as well.”

“Because it’s not true,” Momota insists. “If you’d just listen, I can explain everything to you, I promise. Just…”

“Momota—”

“ _Harumaki._ ”

Maki takes a sharp inhale, eyes once again swimming with some unknown, barely-restrained emotion and stance going stiff—seemingly right on the brink of something explosive. 

But then she appears to think twice on whatever thought she’d had. After a moment, she lets the breath out and her expression begins to harden, gradually icing over as the fire drains out of her. Her right hand reaches across her hip to grip the handle of the short-sword tied to her waist. 

“My job isn’t to listen, Momota,” she says, stone cold, as she draws the blade. “At least, not to anything besides my orders. You should know that by now.”

Anger flares up violently at Momota’s core. “That’s bullshit!” he cries, almost falling over in his scramble to get his legs out from under him. “Screw your orders! And screw the _daimyo_ and every single member of his court who made you think that!”

Maki’s lips thin, eyes fixed on Ouma’s limp form. “I’ve told you before—we all have our roles to play.”

“Screw roles!” Momota snaps. “I don’t see the _daimyo_ or the guards or anyone else besides us here right now, so they don’t get a fucking say in this! Not here and not now!” 

She glares at him again. “I’m trying to _help_ you!” she hisses, turning her eyes down to the unconscious boy and dæmon at her feet with obvious, seething contempt. “That’s all I’ve ever tried to do. Why can’t you let me do that for you?”

“Because I don’t need your help!” he yells, finally letting loose an emotion he’s let fester down inside in him far too long. “I can take care of myself, so I don’t need help or pity or any of that bullshit—I just need  _you!_ ”

Maki goes stock still, and Momota almost snaps at her again, but catches himself. He takes a mental step back, forcing the residual heat of his frustration down like quenching a spitting fire. 

He realizes that with that weight off his chest, he suddenly feels so much lighter. Everything slots into its rightful place.

After a calming breath, he continues, feeling the flame turn to embers. “Look, it’s just you and me right now, Harumaki,” he says—softer, pleadingly as he tries to catch her eye. “No one else. No roles. Just us.”

She doesn’t look at him, but Nirav does, his round eyes unreadable as they stare unblinking at him. Maki’s lips thin as her brow crumples. “It’s not that simple.”

“It can be,” Momota insists. He gets his legs under him and stands, wincing against the bruising pain. He begins to hobble over to her, watching Aquila right herself as well out of the corner of her eye. “Every time you let me into the castle,” he says, “every time you, me, and Shuuichi got to watch the stars together, and every time you tried to teach us archery, or Shuuichi told us the gossip from his crazy family—that wasn’t some shitty role of yours. That was _you_. Simple as that.”

Her hand tightens around the sword handle. “I…,” she starts, then shakes her head. “Perhaps that’s true, but…”

“But?”

She finally looks at him, a wet sheen to the angry cut of her eyes. “But that’s _why_ I have to do this. Don’t you get it? I play my part so that you two can stay safe. I follow the commands I’m given, and in return nothing happens to your village, and nothing happens to you. That’s how it’s always been.” Her lip wobbles. “I _am_ my position, Momota, and if any good can come from that, then I am fine with dirtying my hands for the sake of maintaining some order around here.”

Momota grimaces. “That’s not order, Harumaki, and you know it. You deserve better than that.”

“ _Deserve_ ,” she repeats, sounding thoroughly unconvinced and almost angry at the word. At what it implies. 

And looking at her like this, Momota comes to a sudden realization. He realizes that… _gods_ , they’ve all been so stupid, haven’t they? Somehow, he, Maki, and Shuuichi—every one of them had found a way to martyr themself for the sake of the others. Each one had bottled up all their bitterness and loneliness and discontent inside of them to keep the others unaware and unharmed for all this time.  Shuuichi, following along with the machinations of his uncle. Maki, blindly maintaining her station. And then Momota himself, trying to keep secret all of his feelings of abandonment, his melancholy, and every last gaping fear that had been eating him up inside—not just from them, but from himself as well.

What good had it really done them in the end? How much better off were they for having concealed all their problems from each other?

Unable to stop himself, Momota glances down to the side. Ouma is still unmoving amongst the deep sea of _kudzu_ framing his slumbering face. He looks peaceful, and he looks fragile. It’s the most human he’s ever looked. Momota feels something stir in his chest. 

How long would they have kept all of these secrets of theirs hidden, festering under the surface, if not for the strange little catalyst that had wandered into town that stormy, summer night nearly two months ago?

_Well_ , Momota thinks, watching the gentle, barely-there rise and fall of Ouma’s chest, _who can say?_

Now close enough to do so, Momota reaches out a hand and places it atop Maki’s white-knuckled grip where it sits on the handle of her sword. She starts at the contact. “You do deserve it,” he says, feeling the cool skin of her knuckles warm under his scraped up palm. “What the _daimyo’s_ got you doing isn’t maintaining order, and you deserve better than being another pawn in his rigged game.”

Maki’s eyes are hawk-focused on his dark, dirt-smeared hand. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she murmurs, face hidden behind her bangs.

“Maybe not all of it. Actually, probably not even close to all of it,” Momota admits with a breathy laugh. “But I think you know something’s up. You’ve got to have had suspicions, right?”

Her shoulders hike up defensively. “I… I’m not _allowed_ to—”

“—oh, screw being allowed,” Momota interrupts, mouth pulling up at the corners. “Tell the _daimyo’s_ allowances to go fuck themselves.”

It’s barely there, but Momota thinks he hears a small laugh accompanying the shake of her shoulders. 

He squeezes her hand tightly. “If you want order—real order—then stop listening to that bastard and go listen to someone you can trust.”

She’s silent for a long moment. Then, “Is that supposed to be you?” comes her quiet response, still hiding behind the curtain of her bangs. 

Momota laughs outright this time, tossing his head back even as his neck twinges in protest. “Hell no! But Shuuichi seems to have a pretty good idea of what’s been going on, from what I heard, and I’m sure he could use the extra manpower back in town. You’ve seen that guy—he’s a _total_ beansprout.”

This time she does let out a quiet laugh, though it sounds watery at the edges. After a long moment, one of her arms comes up to scrub across her face, and over it he says, softly, “I know you way more than those shitty nobles do. Get out there and help make some real change, Harumaki. You deserve to be on the right side of this one.”

Her shoulders hike on the crest of a deep, shaky inhale, then another. He grips her hand through it as the waves of cicada songs roll around them, as Nirav tucks the crown of his head into her side. The summer heat is thick, but Momota’s content to stay in it as long as she needs.

Eventually, her breathing evens out. A moment after that, she straightens, looking as proper as ever, minus a few wet smears across her cheeks that just barely catch in the faint sunlight. Momota holds back any comment. He waits for some sort of response, but when she only stares up at him, dark eyes glinting almost red in the low light, he falters under their weight. Heat begins to build in his ears and along his cheeks under her piercing gaze. “Wh—?”

“You’ve changed,” she says, plain and simple. In lieu of elaborating, she gives him one last, lingering look, then gently tips his hand off of her own and lifts the short-sword high enough to slide it back into the sheath at her waist. She pointedly does not look down at the body still slumped at their feet as she begins to walk off. 

Momota remains dumbstruck, hand still lingering in the air as she crosses the clearing. A second or so later, he shakes his head, and turns after her. “What does…?” he starts to say, but then he thinks better of it and his mouth snaps shut. He frowns, turns her statement over in his head a few times, then starts limping after her. “You mean, like, in a good way?”

Maki shrugs from where she’s gathering up her bow, back turned to him. “Who can say?” she says blandly, ducking into the space between the wood and the taut string. Nirav, at her side, sends Momota a look half-unimpressed, half-amused.

Momota flushes under the dæmon’s scrutiny and tries to glare back, but it feels weak even to him. A brush of wind at his ear alerts him of Aquila’s entrance as she lands on his shoulder and starts to fussily preen debris from his hair. As Maki tightens the belt at her waist and pulls the edges of her thick-soled _tabi_ back up her calves _,_ he tells her, “Shuuichi was headed to the east quarter last I heard. The girl he’s working with has this dear-like dæmon with tall horns, kind of like a spiral. They shouldn’t be hard to spot in a crowd.” 

Maki straightens again, lifting her hands to grip the bow where it curves across her chest. She doesn’t look back at him, but Momota can imagine the expression on her face. He smiles lopsidedly. She never liked how her patchy and red her face gets, but he always thought it was a nice touch. “None of the other guards know about the back road to your village. If you follow this ravine further into the woods, you should meet up with it eventually. But you’ll want to hurry before nightfall.”

Even though she can’t see it, he nods anyway. “Thanks, Harumaki.”

“And don’t you dare think for a moment this means I’m letting you off scot-free. I expect a full explanation—in _excruciating_ detail—when this is all said and done.”

“Absolutely,” he promises. “It’s been too long since you, me, and Shuuichi had a real sit-down together, anyway.” 

At the mention of their mutual friend, some of the stiffness in her stance loosens. Shooting a glance over her shoulder, her eyes quickly dart beyond Momota and a spot further off into the clearing. Her brow tips downwards for a moment, but then she shakes whatever thought she’d had off and looks to Momota instead. “Stay safe,” she says. An order, not a suggestion.

Momota grins at the parallel she and Shuuichi make. “You too. Now get out there, hero.”

With a final, curt nod—ignoring the ruddy tinge to her cheeks—she grabs ahold of one of the thin trees dotting the slope and hoists herself forward. Nirav flicks his tail at Momota once, that same, knowing look in his eye, before bounding up the hillside after her. 

Momota watches them as they climb and climb, until they both disappear into the shadows. The clearing falls still. A sigh he didn’t even know he’d been holding in rushes out of him. 

A sharp clap echoes through the ravine, breaking the silence. “Bravo, Momota-chan! What a performance.”

Aquila’s anxious preening stops. Momota’s chest stutters. 

He turns around slowly.

Sitting up amongst the sea of _kudzu_ leaves is Ouma, Metis nestled between his crossed legs as he continues his slow applause. Most of the work he does with his left hand while the right one rests gingerly against his thigh. Blood had seeped out into a small, dark patch where he seems to have bunched his sleeve up against the wound in his arm. A lazy grin splits his features, causing his crescent eyes to crinkle at the corners. 

When Momota doesn’t immediately rise to his taunting, Ouma proceeds to fill the silence. “Not the most original speech I’ve heard, but that blind, stupid optimism of yours really brought the bumbling hero character to life. The theater tends more towards tragedy these days, but with a performance like that, who knows—maybe comedy will make its comeback after all.”

Momota stares on in disbelief. “How…,” he says, barely finding his voice, “How long were you…?” 

“Listening in?” Ouma finishes for him, eyes glinting in the low light. He lifts a coy finger to his lips, only wincing slightly as he moves his arm. “That’s my little secret for me to know and you to never find out.”

Momota’s mouth falls open, but he can’t seem to make any more words manifest. After all, he has so many things he wants to say—so many that in their fight to be heard, nothing manages to come out at all. They all roil like simmering water underneath the surface, pooling along with the echo of firework heat still prickling under Momota’s skin. After everything that’s happened not only today but every day since that mid-summer night—after the churning sea of emotions he’s been struggling to stay afloat in, all over this terrible, frustrating, nebulous, and utterly _impossible_ boy—it feels like a little too much to put into mere words.

So he gives up on words. Instead, he starts walking. 

Ouma eyes him, something caught between intrigue and caution, as he approaches. “I will say though, I was expecting to hear more dirty gossip about me while I was playing dead, but all I got was Little Miss Bloodlust’s snooze-fest cry-session and your little play at heroism. Where were the angry confessions, Momota-chan? The bold declarations? I’m a little disappointed, to be perfectly honest.”

When Momota still doesn’t speak, advancing ever closer, something ripples in Ouma’s expression. A crack in the veneer. Metis hops out of his lap as he gingerly begins to shuffle out of sitting. 

“Anyway, you and your little gaggle of strays have all played your part, Momota-chan,” he says lightly, cringing against the jostling movement of his arm as he tries to keep his needling smile steady, “But! The curtain has fallen, so it’s about time for the actors to run along home, isn’t it?”

It’s an obvious deflection. Momota feels himself go tight lipped, but he keeps walking.

“Your little _Harumaki_ -chan is right,” Ouma continues, but even the blatant, baiting usage of the private nickname doesn’t cause Momota to stop. “It’ll be dark soon, and the ghosts and ghouls lurking out there will no doubt come to spirit you away if you’re not careful.”

An old line, one he’s used before for similar effect. It rolls off of Momota like water this time around.

With greater effort than he wants to let on, Ouma gets one leg planted underneath him, and he braces his good arm on the knee. “Nothing to say, Momota-chan? How unlike you!” His gaze darts up to Momota as he closes in, something anxious in it as it flits between him and his own battered body. The frantic energy in his actions isn’t as well hidden as he’s trying to make it.

He’s trying to run away again, like he does every time. Only this time, it’s not just physically, but with his words as well. He’s trying to so hard to fly out of this valley and subsequently right out of Momota’s life yet again.

“Well? Cat got your tongue?”

And he’s got another thing coming if he thinks Momota will let him. 

Momota’s shadow eclipses Ouma as he finally pushes himself up to standing. He turns his head up, dark, night-sky eyes guarded as he says, “Mo—”

His head fits perfectly in the cup of Momota’s palm as he swoops down and steals the breath of his name from Ouma’s lips. 

Ouma goes shock-still under his hand, sucking in a sharp inhale as Momota’s nose slots in next to his and his other hand slides up the curve of his neck. He can feel the thrum of Ouma’s pulse like the erratic pounding of festival drums in the heel of his palm, just as he can feel the heat spreading across his face like wildfire as he smoothes his thumb over the crest of Ouma’s cheekbone. Momota’s own heart feels ready to explode, like every firework emotion that had been trapped inside his broken body has been let loose in an explosive volley. It’s frustration and it’s relief. It’s anger and endearment. It’s the sensation of getting a taste of the ever-expansive night sky, and it’s so much more than Momota feels ready to put into coherent thought. 

…but in the end, it’s also just self-indulgence and nothing more—he knows. So, screwing up his face and taking one last, lingering inhale through his nose, he moves to pull away.

Just as he leans back enough to feel the seam of their lips separate, though, a hand claws at his neck and drags him back down. He barely has time to think before he feels teeth pull on his bottom lip and a tongue lick greedily across the resulting twinge. When his eyes shock open, Ouma’s meet them, half lidded in challenge. It’s all Momota can do to meet the provocation as it stands. He feels his own fingers knead desperately into the soft skin of Ouma’s neck, up into his hairline, dipping as far into Ouma’s space as the boy will allow. And that turns out to be a _lot_ , he finds, as Ouma pushes for every inch that Momota pulls, a wild, reckless energy in every challenging swell. 

There’s something more underneath the surface, though—Momota can _feel_ it. Ouma fights fiercely, and it would be easy to focus solely on that, but there’s a neediness there, hiding in the cautious twitch of his fingers against Momota’s shoulder and the tender tilt of his chin. Maybe Momota isn’t the only one being self-indulgent here in this moment. 

_Well fine_ , he thinks, taking a quick, humid breath as he lets Ouma’s current overtake him. He can keep that secret. No one else has to know, hidden as they are in this quiet, liminal pocket of the forest. 

Feeling himself grin against Ouma’s hungry, searching mouth, Momota lets some of the desperation slip out of his actions. His hands loosen. He kisses slow. The urgency of the cicada songs seems to soften along with him to a quiet murmur. He smoothes his hand against Ouma’s jaw, relishing the live warmth of his skin even against the stifling summer heat. 

Ouma must notice the change in pace, as his breath hitches ever so slightly. When Momota hazily cracks one eye open, his brow is caught in a funny little tilt over squeezed-shut eyes. One of his hands fists into the fabric at Momota’s waist as the other brushes across Momota’s arm, fingers skirting nervously against his bare wrist like they don’t know what to do with themselves. Momota tastes the hesitant reciprocation on his breath and eagerly chases after it. It’s… _nice_. Really nice.

But then pain shocks quick and violently out from his forearm.

Momota hisses, jerking backwards. His right hand immediately jumps for the piece of wood protruding from his arm, only to slide slickly against blood instead. The last bit of the arrow is suddenly missing. 

He immediately clamps his hand over the wound to stop the slow trickle of blood, but his eyes dart right back to the only possible explanation. 

The arrow fragment hangs limply from Ouma’s fingers, and for a split second, Momota catches a glimpse beyond his ever-present mask. A dusting of red sits flush across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, and his mouth is slack-jawed. There’s a dark red spot on one corner of his lip where Momota knows he’d tugged just a little too hard with his teeth earlier. His chest rises and falls shallowly. His eyes are wide as saucers before they turn down to look at the piece of bloody wood in his hands. Then they track over to Momota’s fingers, clenched tight around his forearm. 

Momota can almost see the cogs start to tug the puppet-string corners of Ouma’s mouth up into a purposefully nasty grin. “Well, look at that, Momota-chan,” he says, turning half-lidded eyes up at him between his lashes, the mask falling back into place, “now we match.”

Momota feels himself boil over almost instantly. 

Quick as lightning, he latches a hand in Ouma’s shirt, and for a quick second Ouma’s wide-eyed panic resurfaces, his expression faltering. Before the boy can say anything, Momota digs his fingers into the hole in his sleeve and tugs him forward. The ripping of the fabric echoes out against the walls of the ravine. 

Without any preamble, Momota pulls the torn fabric away from Ouma’s arm and, using his teeth, begins to rip it into long, haphazard strips. Ouma watches him all the while. When Momota snatches up his arm and lifts it up, he hisses under his breath, but doesn’t fight him as Momota kneels down and slips the strip of fabric up under his arm to tie it tightly around the puncture wound. 

With that done, Momota starts to do the same for his own arm. “Keep holding that up,” he mutters roughly around a mouthful of cloth as he finagles his own bandage into a messy knot. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Ouma turn his arm over in the waning light. “Huh, look at that,” he says after a few, long seconds, voice light and purposefully airy, “you didn’t do a half-bad j—“

“Stop it,” Momota growls, pulling the knot tight and spitting the fraying end out when he’s done. “Just… stop. Quit your bullshit for just _once_ in your goddamn life.”

Ouma’s arm stops moving. After a brief pause, Momota hears, “Aw, but Momota-chan, bullshit’s all I know how t—”

Momota latches his hand around Ouma’s wrist, and both of their faces mirror the same stinging wince. At Momota’s insistent glare, Ouma slowly lowers the foot he’d been making to step backwards on back to the ground. 

“You,” Momota starts, tongue feeling too big for his mouth. He grasps both at Ouma’s arm and for the words he needs. “ _You_ …”

Ouma blinks down at him, expression purposefully neutral, but just barely. “Me?” he prompts with a suspicious arch of his eyebrow. 

Momota feels his hackles raise. “You _goddamn—_ where the hell do you get off saying _I’ve_ got a death wish, huh?” 

The words explode out of him, and with them suddenly it’s like the flood gates open and the rest of what he wants to say comes pouring out in a violent rush. “After everything that you’ve put me through, I can’t _believe_ what a fucking hypocrite you are, but I sure as hell should!” His grip tightens involuntarily, and he feels Ouma’s pulse thud against the pads of his fingertips. “I mean… are you serious? Volunteering yourself as bait— _twice_ even? You can be so fucking stupid, you know that?”

“Coming from you, that’s kind of offensive,” Ouma says, but the insult lacks his usual snappiness. His eyes keep tracking to the circle of Momota’s fingers around his wrist, to his eyes, occasionally to his mouth. 

“Yeah, sure, I’m an idiot—I get it,” Momota snaps. “You’ve said it enough times now, but at least I’m not out here making a target out of myself for the _daimyo_ and half the damn country! At least I’m not giving my friends half-assed farewells through carrier mail! And at least I’m not so _stupid_ as to risk throwing my own life away to prove a p—” 

He catches himself, and judging from the way Ouma’s eyes narrow at him, so does he. 

Momota swallows his excuse down but still tries to glare back against the frustratingly knowing tilt to Ouma’s brow. 

“Okay fine,” he says. “Fine! I’m a hypocrite too, I can admit that, but… if I have to admit it then you have to as well, because… because… _shit._ ” His voice breaks on the last word, followed by a dry, breathy cough. He turns his face into his elbow, clenching his jaw tightly against both the punching coughs and the overflowing dam of emotions pouring out of him. 

Under the pads of his fingers, Momota feels the resistance from Ouma’s arm relax, until he seems to let the entire weight of his arm rest in Momota’s hand. For once, he’s quiet. 

As the coughing dies down, Momota lowers his arm away from his face and mutters, “Where the hell do you get off doing this to… _gods_ , you’re not a fucking _yokai_ , okay? You can’t just… do shit like that. You don’t get another shot.”

At that, Ouma laughs, but it’s oddly subdued for him. A tinge wry. “What’s this, Momota-chan?” he says, his tone almost completely even, save for the small waver at the end. “Finally giving mortality a second thought?”

Momota wants to be mad, but the second he looks back up at Ouma, the second he catches sight of Ouma’s crooked half-smile and the upward tilt of his brow, he feels the fight drain out of him. 

He shakes his head a few times, lips pursed against the tirade he knows he could continue on, but won’t. Instead, he shifts his left hand, letting the thumb snake up until it slips into the soft spot of Ouma’s palm. Ouma starts at the contact. As Momota’s other fingers slide over the back of his hand and across his knuckles, he murmurs, “Yeah, fine, I guess I am. Took a lot of needling, huh?”

Ouma’s arm is stiff, but he doesn’t pull away. “You’ve always been very dense,” he replies, voice a little reedy as he carefully watches the gentle ebb and flow of Momota’s thumb, “so it’s not that surprising. I mean, I’ve heard of dumb, but you really push the definition, Momota-chan.”

Momota snorts. “C’mon, is that any way to talk to the guy who saved your sorry ass? I even took an arrow for you.”

Ouma’s eyes roll skyward. “Oh of course, you mean on top of tackling me, ravishing me, ruining my clothing, and not to mention touching my precious dæ—”

The word cuts off and his mouth snaps shut. A bit further off from where they’ve been anxiously preening each other, the two birds both ruffle up. Momota’s eyes widen, and his grip tightens around Ouma’s hand. Heat licks up his insides as the dots connect. “Wait, you’re telling me you fel—?”

“I said nothing,” Ouma snaps, cheeks peaking red again. He briefly clears his throat, smoothing over his expression again as he says, “But if I _had_ said something, it would have been about what a nasty little deviant you are for breaking the cardinal rule of dæmons, Momota-chan. For _shame_.”

Ignoring the spark of hungry curiosity he feels building inside him, especially with Metis' gaze boring into him and the remnants of fire-sparks in his fingers, he says instead, "That makes no sense."  
  
" _You_ make no sense."

“Since when do you care so much about social norms?”

“Since I discovered that those social norms were suddenly no longer protecting my unsullied honor. I’m a defiled man now, Momota-chan. Who _ever_ will take responsibility?” 

He lifts his left hand to his chest with a dramatic, affected sigh. Meanwhile, the fingers of his right twitch, softly curling around Momota’s thumb where it still clutches his palm. It’s like looking at two sides of a coin and trying to determine which one is heads. 

Momota thinks he gets it, though. “It still saved you in the end, didn’t it? Then I'm fine with it,” he says, softer this time, tipping his eyes up and daring Ouma to meet his gaze. “Hey, I think this makes three times I've helped you out. Does that mean I get another debt off of you?”

Ouma blinks, then lets out a small, haughty snort around his own little half-smirk as the act drops. “ _Please_. I think I’ve had enough of getting caught up in your problems for one lifetime.”

“ _My_ problems,” Momota scoffs. The corner of his mouth tugs up into a lazy smile. "I think you like it.” 

“I certainly do not.”

“I really think you do.”

“No, I _tolerate_ it, out of the kindness of my heart. Just like I tolerated your mite-infested house and your poor-man’s gruel. I’m a saint, really.”

Momota laughs and it sounds a little broken but it feels good. He leans his forehead tiredly against his knuckles, dragging Ouma’s hand along with them. “You’re an asshole,” he says. It comes out ridiculously fond. 

And in spite of everything, Ouma willingly lets his hand be pulled along. “Yes, well… I suppose I'm that too. But it takes one to know one, Momota-chan,” Momota hears him mutter under his breath, sounding as begrudgingly warm as the summer breeze wafting in through the ravine. 

And Momota just laughs. 

He laughs because it’s all so funny, in its own strange, indescribable way. He laughs because he feels battered and broken in so many places, but the sunlight is still warm across the back of his neck, as are Ouma’s knuckles against his forehead. He laughs because the heat like firework-sparks pooling in every last crevice in his chest fills up the hollow spaces so much better than any of the pain that’s held him prisoner for half a year ever had. 

He laughs because it makes Ouma’s face screw up in the most unflattering way, even as his ears peak red at the tips and his eyes dip away peevishly under Momota’s warm, laughing invitation.

In ten minutes' time, Momota will attempt to check the bandage at Ouma’s arm for any leakage and get petulantly swatted away for even trying. In twenty minutes’ time, he’ll have Ouma’s arm looped across his shoulder and his whining right at his ear as the two of them limp down the long path home, a mouthy crow and an ever-patient eagle dipping and diving through the orange sunbeams ahead of them. In an hour’s time, he’ll set Ouma down on the edge of the _engawa_ of his house and wrestle him into letting him care for the bumps and bruises dotting both their bodies, and it will all feel so very familiar—right down to the unusually bright moonlight and the Milky Way winking down at them through the bamboo leaves overhead. 

(By midnight, he’ll pretend to be asleep as Ouma sits up on the futon beside him and trails slow fingers through the hair at his temples, murmuring inaudible secrets to his dæmon under the blanket of summer’s ever-present, comforting warmth.)

But for now, Momota kneels among the sea of _kudzu_ vines and he laughs and laughs over the impossible boy who still willingly let himself be caught within the snare of Momota’s searching fingers. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The morning after, Momota wakes to cicada songs and dewy morning light spilling across his outstretched arm. The waking world filters in in stages, but as he blearily opens his eyes against the sunlight’s reaching fingers, he comes to a quick realization.

While the fire-spark memory of bird feathers and fingers soft at his temples is warm where it's safely tucked away in his memory, the futon pushed up beside his is cold and empty, almost as though there had never been anyone there at all.

Ouma is gone, just like any other faded, summer dream. 

While Momota is not surprised, it still hurts regardless. Even though the rational part of him must have known and seen it coming a mile away, the biting dissatisfaction still gnaws out a hollow space for itself out of his core. _Did Ouma-kun ever strike you as a sedentary kind of fellow?_ the echo of Shuuichi’s voice whispers in his ear.

He lowers his shoulder back down to the futon with a bitter sigh, squeezing his eyes shut tight against the frustrated stinging he feels building at the corners of his eyes.

But then a second realization occurs to him. 

He notices, suddenly, the heavy weight seated in the palm of his outstretched hand, and the thin, scratchy something brushing up under his fingers. His whole body aches as he turns his head back and looks down the line of his arm.

Waiting for him in the palm of his outstretched hand is a note, held down under the weight of a large, familiar gold coin. 

Momota stares wordlessly at them both. After a long, extended moment, he sucks in a sharp breath and frantically scrambles up to sitting. His body screams at him in protest, but he couldn’t even begin to care. Aquila cocks her head at him in a sleepy question from her roost in the rafters as he clumsily spreads the parchment out across the tatami.

The note says: 

_Since you seem to like the idea of debts so much, Momota-chan, consider this one yours to repay._

_I wouldn’t dilly-dally too long, though—I charge_ ** _very_** _steep interest._

Then, scrawled at the very bottom, is an address alongside a name. A medical practitioner _,_ the title next to the name declares. One located on the outskirts of _Edo_.

Momota reads the note over again, then once more, feeling his pulse hammer to life. The _koban_ winks up at him as sunlight stretches across it. 

_Are you so satisfied to stay stagnant forever?_ he can hear Ouma taunt. _Will you really let me have the last laugh?_

 

_If not, then prove it. Come and find me._

 

Before he knows what he’s doing, Momota feels laughter rise out of him. He presses the heel of his palm against his prickling eyes and rides out the fire-spark warmth and his punch-drunk disbelief with every breathy hiccup. When the familiar clench in his chest comes, turning his laughter to glass, he just pockets the note and starts off for the kitchen.

Later, with Shuuichi’s ginger tea stinging against his aching throat but warm in his belly, he grins through his distaste and settles down to count out every last coin from the box that’s been secreted away beneath his floorboards for far too long. It’s only a few thousand _mon_ at best, with the _ryo_ added in, but it’s a tangible number. A tangible goal. One he'll make sure to plot out with Harumaki and Shuuichi—no more secrets between them. One that he is set to follow through on, this time.

 

Because he can’t go dying just yet. 

 

_Edo_ is calling for him, after all.

   
  


(Somewhere in the distance, he swears he hears a crow’s cawing laughter rise up from beyond the sea of cicada songs.)

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Gonna get a little corny here. 
> 
> When I started writing this fic, I was preparing to move back home after spending several years in Japan. It was a move made more out of necessity than one made out of a real desire to leave, so my departure was bittersweet, to say the least. My time there began and ended in the thick of summer, and for all that I hated the worst parts of Japanese summers, there are so many other parts that I couldn’t help but love. It’s hard to put them into words, but this fic gave me an avenue to try, even if it was in a way that was _highly_ abstracted from my own experiences.
> 
> As I said back in the first chapter, this was and always has been one big self-indulgent undertaking on my part. I’m not an expert on either HDM or Japanese mythology (not by a long-shot), so being able to channel the anxious energy I had about moving into something that required hours of planning, researching, and fact-checking (for details that I have to wonder if anyone would have _actually_ called me out on haha) was cathartic, in a way. Even after I came back and summer ended (a while ago…), continuing that process in my spare time was a nice way to call back to that time. 
> 
> While it’s not the longest thing I’ve written, it sure was the most taxing, and now in finishing it, one of the most rewarding! 
> 
> It was always a strange collision of genres for a strange collision of characters in a strange, colliding plot-line, but I’m so glad so many of you seem to have enjoyed it. Thanks to all of you for coming along on Dev’s Wild Historical Dæmon Ride! Now that this is finished, I'd love to answer any questions or just respond to any thoughts you have in the comments. Thanks for reading!


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